


Operation: F*ck Ego Up

by MaidenofIron157



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (a bit more than canon-typical but its not overabundant), Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Language, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Work In Progress, tags will change as chapters are added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24578536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaidenofIron157/pseuds/MaidenofIron157
Summary: He died in the frozen black, and woke to warm sunlight.(AKA: Yondu and Meredith's Super Smart, Well Thought-Out, Absolutely Can't be Ruined in Anyway Whatsoever Celestial-Killing, Universe-Trotting, Accidentally-Child-Raising Plan, Y'all.)
Relationships: Meredith Quill & Yondu Udonta, Stakar Ogord & Yondu Udonta
Comments: 39
Kudos: 122





	1. The Plan

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Highway To Hell](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10917678) by [MeganBStrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeganBStrange/pseuds/MeganBStrange). 
  * Inspired by [Star-Queen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11111394) by [TheBetterAngelsOfOurNature](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBetterAngelsOfOurNature/pseuds/TheBetterAngelsOfOurNature). 



> I've been workin on this bad boy since january, bc I'm a slut for time travel fix-its, and also the idea of yondu interacting w peter's mom in the afterlife comes only second to them working together on some dumbass universe-saving plan and arguing like an old married couple the whole way. this isn't gonna be a meredith/yondu fic, though, sorry, I like the idea of them being shitty besties in this scenario more, but this fic was inspired by two others that are really fuckin good! **Star-Queen** by TheBetterAngelsOfOurNature (which IS meredith/yondu) and **Highway to Hell** by MeganBStrange (which IS a time travel fic). I'm sluts for both of them, go read them Now
> 
> but yeah this can work as a stand alone but it isn't. as of right now its clockin in at 13k, but I Crave Validation, so this is going up by itself first and I'll publish the rest when I publish the rest. maybe next week, maybe when I'm finally finished! either way, enjoy <3
> 
> also the rating may go up. its at T right now for yondu's mouth and references to violence (I'd say canon-typical but let's be real, the mcu toned down/didn't show/just implied a lot of the violence, especially for gotg), so like. be warned for future chapters
> 
> edit [6/25]: also I changed the summary/added a bit bc I felt the original made it sound too serious. this IS gonna have some serious parts to be fair but my writing style does not lead well to non-sarcasm. I'm Just Like That. so. the new part to the summary lmao

He’d dealt with a lotta things, in his day. Having his body mutilated and modified, meeting some people he felt more than fond of, losing them all in one fell swoop, adopting a damn Terran without either of them realizing it, watching half his crew get spaced in a mutiny he should’ve done more to stop.

He’d dealt with fear, and elation, and guilt, regret, so much damned regret. Anger, hot and vicious and sickening. Betrayal, that flew low and settled heavy in the gut. Things that made his hands shake and teeth clench and eyes water, even though he hadn’t let one single tear escape in the years since. Things that threatened alcohol poisoning, or organ failure; things that nearly amputated a limb, that branded him, that nearly, nearly, broke him, sometimes. His own mortality was a constant struggle against grime and adrenaline and the gradual weakening of his body as it aged.

He’d dealt with death, more than a few times. He’d _caused_ death, more than a few times.

His own hurt. Not that he’d expected it to be pleasant – it wasn’t like he was gonna die of old age nice and kindly in his sleep, not with the way he’s lived. He’d hoped it’d be quick, though, in the times he’d thought about it: on the field, fighting back, with a sharp pierce through the temple, or the heart, that’d make him drop like a doll. On his more alcohol-fueled, maudlin nights, he’d admitted to himself that he wasn’t that lucky. When he went out, it’d probably be from blood loss that couldn’t be staunched in time. A hit to the stomach that left his intestines hanging down to his boots in tatters. An explosion that left him alive just long enough to really _feel_ it. Some kinda virus that ate him from the inside out, leaving him seizing on Doc’s table and foaming at the mouth.

Y'know, the fun stuff.

Dying in the cold vacuum of space had never quite made it onto that list. Rather, he supposed he’d just never thought about it in much detail. In his line of work, it was just more likely to get offed the old-fashioned way. Being flung out in a hull-breach or thrown out an airlock…

Well. Those were common, too. As he can attest. But not _that_ common.

He’d remembered to exhale before they left whatever was left of the atmosphere, but what his lungs made up for in not rupturing on him the rest of his body threw out in a rush in the seconds before he finally succumbed to unconsciousness: his blood felt like it was simultaneously boiling and freezing in his veins, his bones as brittle as glass, his muscles bubbling under his skin, his skin freeze-drying to the point that if he _did_ try to move anything (not that he thought he _could_ ), it’d probably crack down as far as it could. His eyes couldn’t see; what color and light managed to get through the blur was quickly fading into the black encroaching from the corners, and no matter how loud Pete screamed and how hard he clung onto his jacket, he couldn’t hear him.

Like he’d said: a cold vacuum. Soundless. Dark. Pitiful, maybe, for someone like him, who’d done what he’d done, but it was a little poetic, in a morbid kind of way. Drifting off into nothing but a frozen corpse along with his crew, his loyal crew, above the remains of the celestial that he’d brought children to die at the hands of, above the remains of the celestial that was responsible for his exile, above the remains of the celestial that his son, _his son_ , had put down, once and for all.

As his vision finally decided to putter out to nothing, and the tips of his fingers and ears and nose became numb enough that they’d probably chip off at the lightest pressure, the last thing he could feel in his chest, in his heart that was throbbing like a pulse gun and feeling about as close to exploding, was _pride_.

…

…But…

But…

But.

He woke up.

It was a gradual thing, like coming out of sedatives so heavy he couldn’t lift his eyelids or curl his fingers for a good hour or so after everything else came online. It was ages before he could manage to open his eyes, and when he did it was to a white plaster ceiling. Definitely not the greasy metal he’d been expecting, and, when he breathed in deep, he was met with what he could only describe as the opposite of the _Eclector_. Something fresh. And _clean_.

“…What. The hell,” he muttered, and wet his lips when they split at the movement, groaning from the gut as he pushed himself upright. His back cracked in three separate places when he did, earning another groan for his efforts, and he raised a hand to rub at his temple, looking around with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow.

From what he could tell, he was laying long-ways on a worn sofa, the fabric grayed with age and scratchy to the touch, in a room with another equally worn armchair (upon which his coat was laid with much more care than it was typically afforded), tacky patterned wallpaper, and well-used wooden flooring, where a corded rug and rectangular table sat before him. There were picture frames on the walls, too far for him to make out any faces, and a closed door across from him with two open windows on either side of it that he could only see blue skies and green grass through. Yellow sunshine was beating through them brightly enough to expose the dust that was floating about – less than even the most frequented portions of his ship, but more than a hospital in Nova space – and he could hear something tittering about from outside, too, as a breeze blew in, soft enough to just rustle the linen curtains.

 _Disgustingly picturesque_ , is what it was.

He moved his hand down from his head to watch himself make a fist and flex his fingers out again.

He clicked his tongue.

“ _Shit_.”

This came out very heartfelt, and he was just considering the best way to push himself to his feet without having all his joints lock on him so he could poke around a bit when a good, hard smack was delivered to the back of his head, pushing it forward and having the dull ache in his body relocate to sharpen at the point of contact.

“The hell!” he found himself barking, lifting both arms to rub at the offended skin of his scalp and twisting his neck to scowl at whoever had the sheer balls to slap him like that.

His eyes settled on a young woman with fleshy pink skin and green eyes. Her hair was _actually_ hair, not some kind of tentacle tendrils or something of the like, sandy yellow and pulled back with a tie to expose her ears and neck, and she was wearing a light-colored dress and stained apron that fit the temperature far more than his own leathers did. It wasn’t humid, or sweltering, but… he felt like he should’ve started sweating by now, even without his coat.

She was also frowning, and had her hands on her hips like it was intimidating, but her eyes were glittering with… with _something_ in the light from the windows. “Ravager or not, I ain’t toleratin’ no cursin’ in this house. You wanna swear, you do it outside.”

His eyebrows rose in disbelief of their own accord, and he found himself letting out a positively incredulous noise that got half-lost in his throat before it came all the way out, which left the corners of the woman’s mouth twitching like she wanted to smile. “Now c’mon,” she went on, moving to hold both hands out between them, palms up. “I gotta stew I need t’watch, and you and I need t’have a talk.”

He found himself snorting at the utter _gall_ of this lady to try and order him around, but rolled his eyes and took her hands anyway, not _actually_ expecting her to have the strength to pull him to his feet, once he’d managed to slide them to the floor. She did it so suddenly his arms popped in their sockets and he started dangerously wobbling and hissing curses under his breath trying to catch his balance, and they stood there holding fucking hands while his knees knocked like a gods-damned toddler learning to walk for the first time. Once he felt like he wasn’t gonna keel over the second she stepped away, he dropped her hands to place them on his lower back and crack it properly. It didn’t help the tension much, not really, but it was the best he could do without having someone literally rearrange his spine, so he just shook out his arms and worked his neck and jaw.

“You’re gonna be feelin’ it for a while, y’know,” the woman said, and he opened his eyes to watch her walk away into the room that’d been hiding behind him when he was on the sofa. It was just as bright as the sunshine still coming in through the windows, and, from the appliances he could see through the doorway from where he was standing, he assumed it was a kitchen. “I figure that’s just what happens when you leave your body behind.”

That made him stop, and he narrowed his eyes after her. He was just opening his mouth to ask what the fuck _that_ meant when…

He supposed she heard his sharp intake of breath, because when she stopped in front of a great metal pot, she threw her head over her shoulder to send him a look that was far more sympathetic than he was used to. It made some kinda knot tangle viciously in his chest, where his heart… wasn’t beating, he realized, after his breath caught and he lifted a hand to rest it on top of his sternum. Did he even need to breathe anymore? It was automatic, it… “Yeah,” she said, lifting the lid to stir it and letting out a gust of steam and mouth-watering scents along with it. “Like I said, Captain Udonta: we need t’talk.”

Yeah.

Yeah, he guessed they did.

He slowly plodded after her into the kitchen, sitting where she indicated with a point of her spoon – a wooden chair with a cushion at a rickety wooden table in the middle of the room. All of the cupboards and cabinets were wooden, too, and the walls in here were covered in pale yellow tiles rather than wallpaper, some cracked and some not. Too goddamn bright for his tastes, and he found his hands curling into fists on top of the table without realizing it. The hell was he doing here anyway? Yeah, he was _dead_ (and that made the fists tighten enough for his quick-bitten nails to dig like knives into his palms), but he shouldn’t be at a fucking – what, in some random woman’s afterlife? She clearly knew who _he_ was, but he–

He…

Aw, _shit_.

“You’re Pete’s momma, ain’t’cha?”

The woman – Meredith Quill – hummed, but didn’t turn, still focused on her stew. He could admit, it smelled damn divine, even though he wasn’t exactly what one would call _hungry_. Was that gonna be a thing, along with his lack of heartbeat – not feeling hunger anymore? A bit of a rip-off, if you asked him, since he could clearly still feel pain and stiffness. “Not t'demean you, Captain Udonta, but I’m impressed. You’ve never even seen a picture of me.”

“The hell else’d be welcomin’ me into their home like this?” he ground out, making an effort to uncurl his fingers and starting to pick at his nails in an attempt to act casual. He’d feel much better about this whole situation if she wasn’t being so… _polite_. “Afterlife or no, I’m not exactly a _popular guy_ , Miz Quill.”

That managed to startle a laugh out of her, and he allowed himself a (very small) satisfied smile. “Don’t mistake me, Captain Udonta: I _will_ be making up for how you treated Peter all those years. Surrogate father or not, you treated my baby like hell, and I ain’t forgivin’ you that.” She couldn’t see it, but he raised his hands defensively either way. Whatever kinda woman could raise Peter Quill practically single-handedly while _deathly-ill_ wasn’t someone he was willing to cross, in this life or the next. Besides, he knew he wasn’t what could be called a _good_ daddy to the kid; better than Ego, for sure, but that bar was in the fucking ground, at this point. The mantle. The _core of the damn planet_. (Were they even _on_ a planet right now? You know what, that wasn’t important.)

“ _But_ ,” Miz Quill continued, with an edge to her voice that had him staring suspiciously at the back of her dress while she fetched two bowls and utensils to start ladling the stew into.

She didn’t speak again until she’d served some for them both and sat down across from him, but, when she did, it was with a grin so wicked it made him blink. It looked very out of place on a pretty Terran, and more _in_ place on a Ravager with a grudge. “I have a proposition we need to hash the details out on.”

He couldn’t help it; he snorted. “A _proposition_? If it’s all the same t’you, Miz Quill, I’d rather be back out in the black suffocatin’ than think ‘bout shackin’ up wit’ _chu_. No offense.”

“Oh, _lord_ , no,” Miz Quill said, her smirk disappearing in favor of a grimace that made him bark out a laugh. “You ain’t as ugly as that Dawlins boy I knew from down the street back in school, but I’ve had t’watch you do some _dumb_ things these past few decades, there ain’t no way you’re gettin’ anywhere close enough to try after _that_.”

That had him guffawing hard enough to wipe a tear from his eye, and when he opened them back up it was to find that that grin had come back in full force, and she’d set both elbows on the table to clasp her hands together. “A’right, a’right,” he said, cracking his knuckles and meeting her grin with one of his own, making sure to bare his teeth. He was impressed when she didn’t flinch, but, he supposed, if she’d been watching over Pete since she’d died, which she seemed to’ve been implying, then she must’ve seen them more than a few times already. Ah, well; more opportunities to unnerve her would present themselves eventually, he was sure. He wasn’t exactly comfortable being in a position without intimidation in play on either side… made him get goosebumps. “What is this _proposition_ then, Miz Quill?”

Her eyes glinted viciously in the sunlight, and he felt his smile grow. “What d'you know about time travel, Captain Udonta?”

“Time travel, eh?” Yondu Udonta raised a hand to scratch at his beard, and clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “I like the sound a' _that_.”


	2. Phase 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _But everything was riding on this._ Everything. _It was hard not to be even just a little nervous at the prospect of fucking everything up and literally pissing their second chance away –_ his _second chance away – because this was all on him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so impatient I was supposed to wait till saturday to publish this... also didn't realize this part of the story was 4k so THAT was interesting to find out. tags have been added (as stated in the previous chapter's notes yondu's gonna curse a LOT, and there's gonna be some gross shit! be warned! and if you want me to raise the rating to M just tell me)
> 
> this bad boy is edging towards 21k now so, enjoy <3

At the end of it all, turns out it was pretty simple: there was a universe out there, more than a few lanes down from their own, where they’d both died much earlier – something like two years for Miz Quill, but closer to a quarter of a century for him – on the same day, at the _exact_ same time. How that worked when time worked differently out in the black, he wasn’t sure, but that was how she explained it. Something about how a minimum of a quadrillion things are happening simultaneously across the galaxy, let alone the whole of the universe, regardless of whatever the clocks on whatever planet or ship someone happened to have their feet planted on at that moment said, blah blah blah, whatever.

The point _was_ , because those Meredith Quill and Yondu Udonta’s hearts and brains had both given out at the same second down to the fiftieth decimal place (and more than that besides), the two of them, sitting pretty in _his_ Pete’s momma’s afterlife, could just… take their places. Just like that.

“Just like that?” he’d parroted back at her, and did nothing to disguise the utter incredulity he felt at the proposal, because this… this was just too easy.

“Just like that,” she’d assured him, going on to explain that she’d done more than double- or triple-check, she’d done something like 61,328 checks, actually, and from what she could tell the only ‘catch’ was that they’d have to deal with whatever’d originally killed those versions of them – for Miz Quill, a car accident that’d resulted in a broken leg for herself but a broken neck for her double, and for Yondu, that job on Ereboea-2 that’d left him bedridden for two gods-damned weeks trying to regrow half his lower intestine that his double, well… _He_ hadn’t been so lucky.

Also that it was less ‘time travel’, and more ‘moving to an alternate universe and changing its predetermined timeline irrevocably’. They were leaving their Pete behind. The idea of that made him want to burn Miz Quill’s pretty little house down, but, well. They technically already _had_ left him behind, by dying in front of him – _both of them_ , gods, and wasn’t that just poetic, really just stellar parenting on their parts that they were doing it _again_ – but. Still. Y’know?

Which is why, after months upon months of planning and reworking and planning and reworking and _fucking planning and fucking reworking_ , every little detail of what they were going to do, in order, was burned into his brain so damn deep he couldn’t forget a scrap of it if he tried.

Similarly, it was why, after they’d put the very first step of this plan into motion – hike their way over to the universe in question and pick up where their bodies’d left off – he found himself cracking into consciousness like someone’d just tazed him. He was on the _Eclector_ ’s operating table (he knew that) with Doc hands-deep in his stomach wound healing the burns from the explosion and trying to get all the shrapnel out without sending him into septic shock (he knew that, too), but it was a shock to the system to go from still-stiff-but-relatively-painless to undergoing-invasive-surgery-with-less-anesthetic-than-he’d-like-because-they-hadn’t-had-the-time-to-pick-up-more-before-this-job-and-hadn’t-expected-a-fucking-ambush. It was something he’d cursed well over a hundred times when he’d first had to go through this damn surgery and something he was doing again now, and the oxygen mask he had on was doing nothing to curb him or lessen his volume. He was as grateful for the straps holding him down to keep him from thrashing too much as he was disgustingly resentful and ready to tear them right the fuck off and stuff them down the closest motherfucker’s throat.

“Thought we lost you for a sec, there, boss,” Doc was saying through Yondu’s very colorful bellows, continuing on like his patient wasn’t a hair’s breadth from doing something exceptionally violent, even for him. “You went real still and quiet-like. You pass out?”

“The _fuck_ you askin’ me questions for?!” Yondu managed to grit out through teeth so clenched his jaw was popping. There was another searing gash from his stomach that overrode the immediate haze of red in his vision to make him slam his head back against the table more than once to try to cause pain somewhere else to focus on that instead. It didn’t work. “I’m ‘onna _kill her_ –”

“Who you gonna kill, boss?”

“ _Shut the fuck up an’ do your fuckin' job_!”

His only salvation, at that moment, was hoping that, on Terra, Meredith Quill was in some kind of pain equivalent to his own, and he wrestled his wrist against the strap that held it down to fling a middle finger at the universe. The lights connected to the greasy metal ceiling of the _Eclector_ above him flickered just a little, as if to tell him _this was your choice, asshole_ , and he started flinging expletives again when Doc pulled something the _wrong_ way.

The next fifteen cycles were as boring as he remembered them, full of not being able to so much as get up to piss or even feed himself for fear of agitating the wound and ripping his stitches clear out. The medical facilities they had available to them were better than most out here in the black, to be fair, and what should’ve had him down and out for at least two and a half months was instead mostly healed at the end of a very dull two weeks, where the most exciting thing that happened was him throwing his bowl of plomeek soup at Horuz when he made a comment that sent his eye twitching. (Watching the man’s hair and beard drip with broth was much more satisfying than scaring the shit out of him with his arrow, which was sat pretty in his lap at all times during those two weeks, glittering under the grime-stricken lights and not split in half. He was man enough to admit that he’d run his fingers over it every so often, whistle just to get it to hover and twirl, just to remind himself it was really there – that _he_ was really there. That their dumbass, _dumbass_ plan had actually fucking worked, and they’d been given a second chance at this shit.)

(His fin, back to what it’d been before the mutiny – rather, before Greenie’s sister shot clean through it – was a little weird to get used to… Which was itself weird, since he’d only had his other, taller fin for less than a year, comparatively, counting his time in the timelessness of Miz Quill’s afterlife, but, hey. He’d just get started rebuilding it earlier this time around, he guessed.)

(He’d run his fingers over the low, humming metal of it, too, sometimes, when he was alone in the medical bay, and the lights were real dim, dim enough for the red light to reflect along the walls.)

He was grateful for the hastened rate of healing, don’t get him wrong. He didn’t wanna be put up in his own medical bay when he had a ship to run and when stars knew what his crew was getting up to in his absence, but it didn’t stop him from mentally calling a certain Terran every name he could think of, accompanied by a steady stream of curses he was sure she’d be trying to cover Pete’s ears over, from his cot.

Getting back on his feet and out on the bridge, out amongst the crew, was… It was a lot. He hadn’t thought about it beforehand – an oversight on both of their parts, and he knew when he brought it up to Miz Quill she’d slap her forehead the way Terrans did when they had a revelation that pissed them off and say some _very_ choice words – but now that he was here, striding through the hallways of the _Eclector_ , younger and arguably cleaner than they’d been when he’d blown her to bits (younger himself, too, and he hadn’t thought he’d put on _that_ much weight in the years since until he looked down at his freshly-scarred stomach and realized that the layer of padding he’d gotten used to was gone in favor of nothing but solid, flat muscle); watching his crew push and shove and prattle with each other, as if a good third of them hadn’t jumped ship the moment they were exiled and another hadn’t thrown the final third out of the airlocks to gleefully watch them suffocate and their bodies freeze in the black.

All because he’d been too soft on the boy. On Quill. On Pete.

What _horseshit_. He understood better than most that being a Ravager meant signing up for a life of violence, but being a little less violent to a literal child who’d just lost his mother and spent a good month sobbing his eyes out over it was – and I know this is a little hard to believe – not proof that he was somehow unworthy of captaining a vessel this size.

(Kinda wish he himself had understood that back then and hammered it good and hard into the crew, instead of letting himself show bursts of affection so rough they barely counted as affection and being eventually responsible for a mutiny that left all but he and Kraglin deader than dead just because he didn’t wanna maim his proto-son for doing shit that’d have anyone else skewered through an eye socket before they could blink.)

(Whatever, moving on.)

It was _weird_ , walking through the halls, interacting with the crew, trying not to grimace at… basically all of them. The ones he hadn’t seen in over two decades, the ones he’d seen freeze to death, the ones he’d killed. There were a few who’d been killed on missions that had nothing to do with any of those, so _those_ were a surprise he had to get used to quick. He’d even forgotten a few of their names, to his silent shame.

Eventually, though – fucking _eventually_ – two whole months had passed, as stress-free as it possibly could be on a ship full to the brim with violent thugs aching for a fight, and it was without hide nor hair of anyone finding his new lease on life suspicious. This may very well’ve been because this ‘new lease on life’ was barely noticeable to anyone except for him. Every time he noticed a slip-up – taking a few seconds to remember someone’s name, scowling at someone else with all of his teeth showing, staring at still another someone for just a little too long – everyone else… just didn’t. He didn’t know if that was because this crew was still working out the kinks, still breaking in the boots and leathers (I mean really, they’d only been on their own for something like two years at this point, _this_ Udonta was nothing short of a rookie, which was _hysterical_ , the more he thought about it, here _he_ was, with decades more experience and something like a little less than thirty pounds he’d been compensating for through those decades, having to deal with a crew that didn’t know their heads from their asses)…

… _or_ if it was because he wasn’t “close” to anyone on the ship yet, as close as he ever got to anyone on the _Eclector_ , which wasn’t very. He (that is, this universe’s _he_ ) was still trying to make his way in the black, trust didn’t come easy out here. Kraglin wasn’t even first mate yet! The only person who would’ve noticed that something was up was the one person he was doing his ample best to avoid like the plague.

The fact that this person was several star systems away at basically all times, and that he was able to straight up avoid his calls when they came through, helped in this endeavor immensely.

All of this added up to him being able to fool the entirety of the crew, thank the gods, for the two months he’d needed to patiently, so fucking patiently, wait through to properly kickstart he and Miz Quill’s plan. Sure, they’d managed the first part of it without any hiccups, but now that he was as settled as he was gonna get? It was time to do what they’d come here to do.

Fuck Ego up.

And the opportunity came, finally, on that day two months after his arrival – the day he’d first been contacted by the celestial, to pick up his first kid.

And to tell the truth, he was a little nervous.

Not afraid, no. He’d stopped being afraid after he’d had to watch Pete, blurry and inaudible, while his body failed on him. Hard to be afraid of anything after you accepted death like that, and Ego, that son of a bitch, didn’t deserve any sliver of fear that might still be staining his soul.

But everything was riding on this. _Everything._ It was hard not to be even just a little nervous at the prospect of fucking everything up and literally pissing their second chance away – _his_ second chance away – because this was all on him. Miz Quill had the job of sitting pretty on Terra trying to find a way to destroy Ego’s _seed_ or whatever he called it, Yondu, frankly, could not find it in himself to give a single shit what word he used to refer to his planet-killing self-extensions. If he could remember the coordinates Ego gave him from _before_ , this would be a little easier, but that would only lead him to seven kids, and then Pete. Seven kids was better than no kids, but seven kids was still dozens, hundreds less than the absolutely outrageous number the celestial had spawned throughout the galaxy, let alone the universe.

And he didn’t remember the coordinates anyway. He’d made sure to drink _those_ memories away as soon as Pete was as safe and sound as he could get on the ship and _they_ were as far from Nova controlled space as _they_ could get.

So, when the call came through, he was on his best behavior, with his most pristine acting skills raring to go, and kicked everyone out of the bridge so he could ensure that no one else fucked this up for him. He used those exact words, too: “You think I’d keep any a’ you pieces a’ shit around to fuck up a call and cost us a job? I think the fuck _not_.” Now he just needed to convince Ego that he was the biggest shitstain this side of the Kree system… without _actually_ being the biggest shitstain this side of the Kree system. He’d convinced him he was willing to traffic kids last time without any trouble (even though he’d convinced himself that it wasn’t actually trafficking, no, of course not, it was just taking an orphan back to their daddy, except then it was two, then three, then six… then Pete, and exile, and he’d, honestly, never really recovered from that, as much as he liked to try and fool himself about it), so, hopefully, this time would be just as easy.

Turns out, Ego was just as self-obsessed and oblivious to anyone trying to pull one over him as Yondu was hoping he was.

He answered the call as it was put through sprawled over his chair as nonchalantly as possible and picking at his teeth, slightly whiter and less metallic than they were _before_ , with a knife he remembered losing five years from now on Bu’kallik. His eyes were half-lidded with seeming disinterest, because being too eager was never ideal where the individuals who sought council with a Ravager faction were concerned, but the fact that he picked up the call at all made it clear he was willing to negotiate.

Ego looked just as slimy and put-together as he always did, playing the worried parent to perfection, and it made his stomach roll. “Yondu Udonta?” was what he asked, as if he wouldn’t know, having had to go through the channels to pick him out specifically.

“ _Captain_ ,” he enunciated, “Udonta.”

“Ah, yes, _Captain_ Udonta,” Ego corrected himself, smarmy and greasy, and everything in Yondu wanted to sneer and hang up on his smug fucking face. It took everything else to keep his stance casual and non-threatening. (Well. He could never be _non_ -threatening, no Ravager could. Bored-but-willing-to-haggle was more appropriate.) “I’ve called to offer you a job.”

“With all due respect,” Yondu drawled, leaving off the silent _which is none_ he wanted to add at the end of that sentence. “You wouldn’t be callin’ me if it _weren’t_ t’offer me a job, Mr…?”

As though he didn’t know who he was. Ego played abashed, sheepish he’d forgotten to introduce himself, and Yondu removed the knife from his lips to purse them. “My apologies, Captain Udonta. You may call me Ego. With luck, my offer will lead to a continuing and profitable relationship between us.”

“Oh?” In line, he played the greedy motherfucker looking to get rich quick. Ravagers were all about profit, and having a regular customer or two or five was something a lotta crews dealt with. Reliable income. (Or, as reliable as it could be, in their line of work.) “Well, let’s hear it then, _Mr._ Ego.”

As good of an actor as Ego was, Yondu could see right through his relieved smile to the satisfied smirk underneath. _Yeah, fall for it hook, line, an’ sinker, you smug sonuvabitch._ “In my younger years, I’m afraid I was… rather prolific, in my romantic trysts. I was planning on becoming involved in my children’s lives as they grew up, but things haven’t worked in my favor, in that department–”

“Get to the point,” he interrupted, staring at the screen and trying to ignore the way his chest was aching at the reminder that last time, he’d fallen for _Ego’s_ spiel instead.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Ego said with a wave, acting contrite, as though he was sorry for wasting Yondu’s time. “What I’m trying to say is, some of my children’s mothers have passed away.” He put on the _concerned father_ look he’d perfected, and Yondu wondered for the first time who he’d practiced it on: his mirror, or some other poor sod who’d fallen for his tricks. The man had to be a master of deception to get that many women from that many species to believe he was the best thing since sliced gorgula. He’d spent a long time assuming he was the only one weak enough to let Ego get to him, especially within the hordes, but now that he was thinking about it…

He tuned back in to Ego finishing his impassioned speech with, “That is what I am proposing: for you to transport my orphaned children to me in exchange for some rather substantial funds.”

Yondu took the impulse to snarl at him how that _still constituted trafficking you child-killing bastard_ and viciously strangled it so he could keep up the act. “How substantial we talkin’?” he said instead, feigning indifference and using the knife still in his hand to start picking at his nails. They were as bitten to the quick as they always were, but the tiny nicks of the blade did wonders for his temper.

It was a technique he’d learned from Aleta: if they thought you weren’t interested enough, they’d up the ante, give you a better deal, especially if they were desperate. Ego wasn’t exactly _desperate_ , but he'd taken the time to track down his contact _specifically_ , thinking he was inexperienced enough and greedy enough and easy enough to manipulate with a sob story to shirk the code for a few credits.

The fact that Ego’d made the right gamble _before_ was, well. It was a damn good motivator.

“Oh, half a million credits for each, I suppose,” Ego said, blasé, like half a million credits wasn’t something every single Ravager would kill for. “Of course, if you’d like more, that can be arranged. The trip to and from each planet to me may cost you and your crew in fuel alone–”

“Make it 700,000 with a pre-payment for each,” Yondu told him, in no uncertain terms, grinning to stomp down the nausea of agreeing to this _again_. “An’ you’ve got yourself a deal.”

From Ego’s answering grin, he could tell he was beyond pleased. “Deal. I’ll send you the first child’s coordinates right away–”

“Well, hold on, now.” He leaned forward in his seat and raised exactly one finger, narrowing his eyes at him. This was the primary difference between his first interaction with him from _before_ and this one: trying to get as much access to as many of the kids from the get-go as he could. “From what you’re sayin’, you’ve got enough sprogs out there to populate a city center no problem.”

Ego rubbed the back of his neck and, again, played sheepish. “Yes, well…”

Yondu waved a hand dismissively, truly well and beyond uninterested in hearing anything else about his so-called _trysts_. “Why bother sendin’ over the coordinates for each of ‘em one by one when you can send a whole list of ‘em an’ we can grab a handful at a time? Save on those fuel costs you were talkin’ about, havin’ to go to an’ from your pick-up every time.”

“Ah,” Ego said, thoughtful. He stroked his beard. “Well, I didn’t originally want them to know they had siblings, let alone so many; surely they’d feel…”

“I’m _sure_ they won’t care,” Yondu said flatly, although he wasn’t so sure. Finding out the man who’d abandoned your momma and you to father some more kids who he’d abandoned to father some more kids who he’d abandoned… It’d probably lead to _some_ resentment, at best.

That, however, was kinda what he was going for. It wasn’t like he was going to bring any of them to Ego _anyway_.

So, he decided to start talking out of his ass, and prayed to every god that’d never answered before that Ego didn’t understand how children worked on even the simplest level.

“If none of ‘em’ve got siblings, they’ll probably be beyond themselves when they find out they do,” he continued, gesturing with his knife. “An’ the ones that _do_ ’ll probably be beyond themselves meetin’ another species, with how many’re planet-locked.”

Ego sighed, as though put-upon, and Yondu felt his heart start racing faster. It’d started the second he’d gotten the call, but now, it felt like it was going to beat out of his chest. “That is true… Alright, I’ll send over a list, one with enough information to account for several drop-offs before having to send more. How many will you be bringing at a time? Fifty? A hundred?”

“Twenty,” Yondu said, making sure not to speak too quickly and to keep his voice from croaking. _Hook, line, and fucking sinker._ “Ain’t got that much room on this ship, an’ any more mouths t’feed’ll be a hassle no matter the age.”

“I’ll send over a pre-payment for each, then, along with the list. Will 100,000 be acceptable?”

“Three hundred. Tha’s almost half the final payment; you can send through the rest after they’re dropped off.”

“Deal.”

Yondu had never appreciated Ego’s utter lack of knowledge of just how to haggle than in that moment. He didn’t even question it. Yondu’d just made _six million credits_ for a job he wasn’t gonna do. _Absolute dumbass._

“I can’t thank you enough, Captain Udonta,” Ego gushed, back to overly conciliatory and ass-kissy. A gag got caught in Yondu's throat at the tone. “I’ll be sure to send over the pre-payments, the list, and the drop-off coordinates within the next few minutes.”

“You’d better,” Yondu grunted, leaning back in his chair and bringing his knife back to his teeth. Was he sweating? The back of his neck felt hot.

“A pleasure doing business with you. I look forward to doing more in the future.” And then, with a parting smirk-disguised-as-a-smile, he was clicking off.

It was only when Ego finally, blissfully vanished from his view screen that Yondu’s muscles relaxed, and he let himself spit where the celestial’d been with all the disgust he hadn’t been able show when he’d been visible. His face was strained from the effort it’d taken to keep it from showing more anger than mere impatience, and his hands were shaking as he bent double, scrubbing them over his face and his head and his fin.

He’d done it. He’d actually done it. He’d convinced Ego to trust him to bring him his children – and he hadn’t even specified they be _healthy_ , let alone in one piece, _gods_ , he’d really fallen for this last time? Or was the fact that he hadn’t even thought to bring up the code and Ego therefore hadn’t had to argue his position the reason he hadn’t told him to keep them safe? Had Yondu convinced him he was that much of a morally corrupt, dishonorable bastard? Questions, questions, none of them even close to the realm of getting answered any time soon.

But he’d done it.

And when he heard the ping of his receiver as Ego’s promised message came through, he raised his head with closed eyes, sucked a sharp breath in through his nose, blew it out through his mouth, and just took a second.

He took a very long, very reflective second.

And then he got to his feet, wiped Ego’s message from his view screen without a second glance, and turned on his heel to exit the bridge with his coat flaring at his legs.

Time for step two.

But first… he was gonna get drunk.


	3. Phase 2.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I took the job,” he said, lifting the hand holding the view screen when they started murmuring excitedly to silence them. “_ But _,” he continued, putting emphasis on the ‘t’. “We ain't doin' it.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little mid-point/in-between before we get to the big guns. enjoy <3

His crew, as he’d expected, were on his ass from the second he stepped off the bridge. Usually he’d tell them if they got a job or not, once he was off a call and back out in the guts of the ship, but the look on his face was enough to scare them off and give him a straight shot to his quarters to drown his sorrows in as much booze as he he had on hand. He didn’t know what they were gossiping about when he triple-locked the door behind him and was basically a no-show for the next fourteen hours, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. Wasn’t his problem. _Technically_ he was still a rookie, he shouldn’t be able to get away with shit like this just yet, but, he was still their captain, and still had his arrow. They knew better than to question it to his face, at least.

He didn’t quite manage to sleep the hangover away by the next cycle, obviously and unfortunately, and wound up having to address everyone in the galley with squinted eyes and bundled as tightly into his coat and leathers as he could manage, standing on a table with his crew in front of him and a portable view screen in hand.

“A’right,” he began, clearing his throat to make it seem like his voice wasn’t as hoarse as his vomiting up everything from the day before’d made it. “I know you’re all wonderin’ just what the hell went on yesterday.” That made a few of them fidget and shift on their feet, and he had to close his eyes to stop them from rolling. _Were they_ always _this unsure, at the beginning?_

“I took the job,” he said, lifting the hand holding the view screen when they started murmuring excitedly to silence them. “ _But_ ,” he continued, putting emphasis on the ‘t’. “We ain't doin' it.”

 _That_ got them going. “Why not?!” some brave soul hollered, outraged along with the rest of the crew, and he couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes this time, as much as it made his head throb.

“Because he’s tryna get us to traffic kids, tha’s why!” he hollered back. Rather than shutting them up and getting them to listen, they surged together in a furious wave, bellowing at the top of their lungs all over each other. That made his head throb more, and the only way to get some semblance of control back over them was to bring both hands to his mouth and whistle as loud as he could. After two years, his crew’d been conditioned to associate whistling with danger, and all of them went silent.

“ _As_ I was _saying_ ,” he growled, looking over every one of them with narrowed eyes. “He wants us to traffic kids. Pitched it all pretty about wantin’ t’get to know all ‘is sprogs again – all _ten thousand_ of ‘em.” When he’d read through Ego’s message after ensuring his pre-payments’d gone through (and couldn’t be retracted, no matter what Ego tried), he’d vomited again, more bile and less undigested booze this time. He thought he’d been disgusted by him before, but this… And he’d said the list only had _some_ of his children, only a fraction of the kids he’d really brought into this universe. The celestial was immortal, he had to’ve been doing this for literal eons, crashing through galaxies trying to find a way to expand his reach and leaving nothing but bodies in his wake. The thought made him have to shove down a shudder.

Luckily, his crew seemed just as revolted, but he kept talking before they could start another riot. “Talked big about how some a’ their mommas’d passed an’ he wanted t’get to know ‘em an’ wanted us to bring ‘em to him – thought we were desperate, or jus’ that greedy, I figure. Thought we’d be willing to break the code for some credits – an’ I won’t lie, it’s a pretty significant amount a’ credits.” When he saw a few of their expressions go carefully blank, he memorized their faces, and bared his teeth.

His voice went as soft and dangerous as he could make it, quiet enough to strain to hear, and he was pleased to see several of them flinch at the tone. “But ain’t _nuthin’_ , worth them kids’ lives. _Nuthin’_. No amount a’ credits’ll be worth the stain on your soul, the way you won’t be able t’sleep at night without seein’ them kids’ faces in your dreams, screamin’ how you coulda saved ‘em if you just hadn’t taken the bait, imaginin’ jus’ what they went through before they finally kicked it an’ how it was all your fault. _Nuthin’_.”

It was silent. A few of the crew ducked their heads. A few others looked distinctly teary-eyed and were doing their best to hide it. He vaguely remembered those ones having been trafficking victims themselves, and felt a fresh wave of guilt over having so thoroughly betrayed their trust _before_.

“And _before_ you ask,” he continued, deceptively light. “Jus’ how I know that this man wasn’t tellin’ the truth – that he’s not actually just some worried ol’ daddy, tryna get in touch with ‘is long lost sprogs after they lost their mommas, well. One has to wonder just how he knew they’d lost their mommas in the first place, after not havin’ been in contact with ‘em for who knows how long.”

He waved the view screen that was still in his hand. “ _And_ , he sent me a list. _The_ list. Ten thousand names, ten thousand coordinates… an’ if you _really_ think, that some genuine, apologetic father would be comin' to _us_ for help gatherin’ up all ten thousand of his spawn for him to do who knows what with – without even a by-your-leave, or a requirement that they be in one _piece_ when he gets them – then, frankly, I want you off my ship, and I want it _now_.”

No one moved.

“Good,” he said, practically purring. “Now, I have these names ‘cause I managed to convince him that we _are_ that kinda scum – that _I’m_ that kinda scum. I have no intention of goin’ through with takin’ any a’ these kids to the drop-off – maybe a’ recruitin’ a few a’ the older ones, or ferryin’ the young’uns somewhere safer, outta his reach…” Another part of the plan. _Miz Quill owes me so much gods-damned liquor._ “…but _he_ don’t know that.”

Half the crew seemed to know where he was going with this, and looked more than a little enthusiastic as he continued. “As a result, I got the pre-payments for the first twenty kids we would’ve been bringin' him along with his list, and my, oh, my, it _is_ rather generous. Would you like to hear just how much I squeezed outta this sonuvabitch, boys?”

A cacophony of agreements were echoed back at him, and he basked in the feeling for a moment or two. He waited for them to calm back down to a few excited whispers, before telling them just how many credits Ego’d given up practically free of charge.

The noise from the galley sounded like a bomb’d gone off.

-

Getting the crew up to speed and on his side was only the first half of stage two.

The second half involved talking to, to his eternal reluctance, _Stakar_.

The one he’d been avoiding like the plague and personally ignoring every call from since he’d come back.

(Yeah, remember that?)

When Miz Quill’d first brought the idea up to him, he’d nothing short of balked. It was, quite frankly, the most they’d argued in the timeless months they’d spent going over the plan. The two of them didn’t quite get on like a gas main on fire, but having a common goal and working towards it with enough determination to make a lesser being sob kept them from getting on each other nerves too awful much. Bringing up Stakar, however, was crossing a line, let alone bringing him up to bring him into the loop, and he’d told her as much.

Well. He’d _shouted_ at her as much. He didn’t get violent, if only because he’d managed to suppress the urge to punch anyone who brought the man up in the decades since he’d been exiled, but he’d seen red, gotten in her face, dug his nails into his palms hard enough to draw blood if he’d had any blood left to draw, and flew spittle from his mouth as he’d explained ever so pleasantly that Stakar was _not_ going to be a part of the fucking plan, who the _fuck_ do you think you are getting into my business you nosy no-good Terran mother _fucker_.

Miz Quill, as he’d come to expect, hadn’t even flinched, and didn’t say anything until he’d paused to take a breath to keep shouting; “The Yondu Udonta you’re replacing hasn’t been exiled yet.”

And that’d shut him right up.

He’d _known_ that, inside, deep down, honestly, he had. He’d _known_ that if they managed to follow through with their dumbass, reckless plan that he was going to be thrown into an _Eclector_ from before Ego’d ever even first contacted him – a _completely_ clean slate – but, somehow, it just… hadn’t connected. That existing before Ego also meant existing before exile. That existing before Ego meant that Stakar, that the other Flames and the hordes, still trusted and respected him. It genuinely hadn’t even floated onto his radar until Miz Quill’d brought it up.

Stunned silent, she’d managed to keep talking, and explained that if they went through with this, and he _didn’t_ bring Stakar in on it, on the fact that he was taking this job and picking up some of those kids specifically to keep them _away_ from Ego, he’d find out, one way or the other, and when he did, it’d be too late for Yondu to say his piece, and then, well. Who knew what would happen.

Yondu. _Yondu_ knew what would happen. Stakar, frankly, probably wouldn’t give him the chance to speak. Aleta _definitely_ wouldn’t. They’d come to their own conclusions and pass their own judgments with or without his hearsay (meaning, obviously, that it’d be without, since why would they listen to _him_ , the _traitor to the code_ ), and those conclusions wouldn’t be changing any time soon, as evidenced by the pretty little confrontation he’d had with the man in question on Contraxia before everything went down with Ego and Pete and the cold embrace of the black. He hadn’t bothered speaking up for himself _before_ , partially for the reasons above, but mostly because he’d been so choked with guilt that it’d almost been a mercy having his sentence hammered down on him without having to testify. A part of him’d even agreed he’d deserved it. Still did. This time, knowing he hadn’t done anything wrong (and wouldn’t be if he had anything to say about it), he’d fight back tooth and nail.

But he knew that that fighting wouldn’t be enough. Even with the weight of his crew backing him up, they’d probably all be accused of supporting a trafficker, a _child_ trafficker, and all of them would be black-listed, kept out of safe hotspots and planets and the ship fired at if they entered Ravager space.

So, after thinking it through for a solid seven seconds (a very long seven seconds, during which he’d internally pinched the bridge of his nose and said the filthiest string of swears he could think of), he’d agreed.

So he had to call Stakar.

And _talk_ to him.

 _Civilly_.

Ugh, just the _thought_ made him want to gag.

If it was up to him, he’d be comm-ing _any of the other Flames_ , but Miz Quill’d specified contacting him. Stakar. The man who’d personally dragged him off of a Kree war ship and shot his former master point-blank in front of him. The man who’d personally seen to his recovery in the _Starhawk_ ’s medbay and got him to eat something, anything, after starving himself for the first week and a half. The man who’d personally trained him up from the feral fucking twig he’d been to someone he’d then personally appointed to the Flames, and personally given a ship and a crew.

The man who’d personally exiled him, and cast him out of the 99 clans, and told him that if he ever saw his face again he’d be lucky not to be shot where he stood.

 _That_ man.

 _Good fucking gods._ He rubbed his forehead and then slid his full palm down the rest of his face, trying to distract himself. He was going to have to do this whether he wanted to or not – Miz Quill’d even told him she’d’ve done it, if the plan didn’t also involve her being stuck on Terra for the first few months, and also didn’t involve the fact that Stakar literally had no idea who the fuck she was – so he just had to suck it up and do it. He was already in his quarters, he just had to pick up his view screen and dial up Stakar’s contact. Easy! Simple. He didn’t even have to try and remember his number, because right now, it hadn’t been deleted in the rage-induced drunken stupor he’d been in after his trial yet! Simple.

Simple.

Just–

He groaned out loud, knocking a fist against his temple, and shrugged his coat off to fling it over the chair he always flung it over before sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. He went through the motions of removing his uniform without having to think; scarf, buckles, knives, vest, boots, till his jumpsuit was puddled around his waist and he was tapping his fingers on the edges of the view screen he’d managed to pick up without realizing. He could see his reflection on the glass, just waiting for him to make that fucking call.

Succeeding at lying to a scumbag like Ego was nothing compared succeeding at lying to a scumbag like the leader of the gods-damned Ravagers. Stakar would know something was up the _second_ he saw who was calling, let alone the second he got a good look at him; he couldn’t remember ever being the one to reach out, in those first two years, and he sure as hell didn’t look at a hundred percent, whatever a hundred percent was for him. No matter how he spun what he had to say, he’d be suspicious. _Hey, Stakar, before you come hunt me down to skin me alive and string me up from my insides, let me explain that I took this job trafficking children for the express purpose of NOT doing that, and even though I’m planning on picking up some of those kids it’s actually for their own safety, NOT to bring them to their genocidal power-hungry celestial father that I already had a hand in killing once._

The man was no stranger to schmoozing sons a’ bitches outta money they didn’t need, but Yondu just had the weirdest hunch that this was going a bit too far.

 _Ah, well._ He’d exhausted his booze supply last night trying to get the taste of agreeing with Ego out of his mouth, so he couldn’t do this drunk, to his irritation. He just… He punched Stakar’s contact before he could talk himself out of it, because he knew if he did he wouldn’t be able to talk himself into it again, and heard the dial tone start ringing.

He let the hand holding the view screen fall into his lap so he could rub at his eyes again. The headache from the hangover hadn’t really disappeared throughout the day, and overthinking this whole thing was just making it worse. He knew what he had to do, he’d frankly already gotten the hard part out of the way, so why was this so _difficult_?

Before he could fall further into a downward spiral with no hope of crawling out, the call connected, and the voice he’d gotten so used to remembering as betrayed and furious came through as unimpressed and moderately concerned. “What’s wrong.” Not even a question, just a statement of fact.

Yondu knew this was because getting an unexpected call from someone who never initiated and only received (at best) immediately sent up red flags, but it still made him want to snap back at him. He took that urge and stuffed it down tight into his uneasy stomach. “Uh.” Oh, yeah, _that_ wasn’t suspicious. He carefully hid a grimace, and carefully avoided looking directly at the view screen. He could just vaguely see Stakar’s head in his periphery, but not his expression.

“I managed to swindle some sick bastard out of a decent chunk a' credits, but I figured I should give you a heads up on what ‘e wanted me t’do in exchange, even though I ain’t followin’ through on it.” There. That was the basics.

There was a beat. “I’m assuming whatever it is won’t make me happy.”

Yondu didn’t bother holding in his snort. _You could say that again._ “Hell no.”

A sigh. “Let’s hear it, then.”

“…Six million in pre-payments for twenty kids.”

Silence.

He used his free hand to rub at his eyes again, and his leg started bouncing up and down as he waited. He half-expected Stakar to exile him again just like this, through a view-screen, with no rhyme or reason or warning, and the longer the silence dragged the more he was assured that it was actually going to happen, no matter how far-fetched the idea was. The man was obsessed with his rules, with the code, he wouldn’t cast him out without consulting at minimum the other Flames, but Yondu’d come to expect certain things of the man in the twenty-six years since his original exile and each and every one of those things were not what one would call complimentary. He’d’ve thought he’d just straight-up disconnected if not for the outline he could still see out of the corner of his eye, even though he was trying not to look.

When Stakar finally spoke, his voice gave nothing away, which was almost worse than if it had. “How close are you to Contraxia?”

That had Yondu moving his hand away from his face and blinking at the wall. “What?”

“Contraxia. How close are you?”

“No, I heard that, I meant – why are you asking how close I am to Contraxia?”

“We’re docked here till tomorrow midday, and I want you here in person, where you can’t just avoid looking me in the eye over the view screen, Yondu.”

He winced. It wasn’t that he’d been expecting Stakar not to notice, because he hadn’t exactly been trying to hide it, but getting called out on it was always awkward. And the prospect of having to see him in person, more than likely to further explain and defend his position, made his jaw twitch. _This wasn’t part of the plan._

On the other hand, their last in-person meet-and-greet _before_ ’d been on Contraxia, too. _How poetic._ “We’re… not far, I guess. A few jumps.”

“Meet me in the usual drop-in, then. I’ve got a room. And set your boys loose. You bring ‘em up to speed?”

“Earlier, yeah. Sure they won’t be none too shy on spendin’ those credits,” was muttered under his breath, but from Stakar’s snort it wasn’t quiet enough.

“I’ll tell Tahl-Li I’m expecting you.” Which was, in Stakar-language, ‘don’t flake out, or else’. Yondu knew the ‘or else’ meant he’d automatically assume he’d been trying to contact Stakar to cover his tracks while really planning on actually going ahead with the deal, and just nodded, once, shortly, and stayed unnaturally still until Stakar clicked off the channel two seconds later, when he let out all the air he didn’t know he’d been holding and let himself fall back onto the mattress with a groan.

Because this had just complicated things.

Because if Stakar had sussed him out so succinctly through vid-call alone, without Yondu even looking at him, he had no hope of lying so blatantly to his face in person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:3c


	4. Phase 2.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Miz Quill’s going to take my arrow and shove it so far down my throat I’ll be shitting yaka for weeks._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /waggles eyebrows: I live for drama. clockin in at nearly 30k now and I haven't even gotten to sol yet asdfjkl, so that's where I'M at emotionally. enjoy <3

Contraxia was as much of a frozen wasteland as it’d been the last time he’d visited _before_ , trying to forget his woes in the body of a pleasure-bot and only moderately succeeding before everything went to even worse shit on the streets below. The lights were garish and glaring against the snow and slush and pretty metal bodies of the bots as they looked for customers and entertained guests, and the air was thick with cold and the smell of sweat and sound of music and howling club crowds. Yondu didn’t know how the natives put up with it all the time, or if the revenue made up for it. Some planets were just havens for trouble, and Contraxia was no exception, nowadays, on the outskirts of Kree and Nova space and with enough booze to keep the peace for just one more day.

Ravagers, as pioneers of drinking and fucking and being out of Kree _and_ Nova jurisdiction, liked Contraxia _very_ much.

Stakar’s favorite establishment, _The Hidean_ , was a six-floor monstrosity of a bar and hotel and sex dungeon that Yondu’d always hated for the way the clientele liked to think he _worked_ there, every time he got within a block of the place. He had to keep his arrow whistling around his head in tight circles and stare down anyone who got too close to get in unmolested, and Tahl-Li, the Contraxian at the counter, let him into the only elevator in the building to get to the sixth floor, “Room 47!”, when he’d told him who he was here for, over the echoes of the thumping music in the basement below.

Comparatively, the sixth floor was quiet – although, nowhere on Contraxia was ever really quiet. One lucky trio’s door’d been left wide open for all and sundry to hear what they were up to, and from the sounds of it it was some quite serious business, business that Yondu walked right past with no more than a roll of his eyes. The music from the basement was more felt in the foundations of the building than heard this high up, and the goings-on outside were loud enough to still get through the stick-thin walls on even this floor. The wallpaper was orange, the carpet was pink, the lights were yellow and one of them was flickering and dangling dangerously from its socket, and Yondu remembered every time he’d ever had to meet Stakar here _before_ and wondered, not for the first time, just what the _fuck_ he saw in the place, because it was a gods-damned _nightmare_.

But, he found Room 47 without any real problems, and pounded on the wooden door loud enough to be heard over the enraptured screams of the particularly happy lady in Room 42 so he could shove himself inside the second the lock clicked and it started to open. “Gods-damned exhibitionists,” he growled, snatching his arrow out of the air and stuffing it back in its holster as the door shut behind him and the lock clicked back over. He stalked to the only window in the room and looked down onto the street, watching someone across the way start swindling some old fools out of a couple credits with some slight-of-hand. “I’d tell ‘em to get a room, but.”

The solid figure of Stakar snorted, at that, moving away from the door and, from the swish of sound, spark of light, and sudden smell of smoke, lit one of those fat cigarettes he liked so much. It made Yondu’s nose scrunch and lip curl, and he, in full view, cracked open the decaying window an inch or two so he wouldn’t be stuck in the room with it. He’d always hated those things.

Stakar just barked out a laugh. “Well, at least I know you’re not an impostor.”

That had Yondu raising an eyebrow, and he turned just enough to throw a disbelieving glare his way. It was the first good look he’d gotten of him since _before_ , and it made his stomach drop. He looked exactly the same, of course, he always did, Arcturans didn’t age, after all, but the way the corner of his mouth was lifted up in a crooked smirk behind his cigarette, fond and exasperated and everything Yondu hadn’t seen in decades, made his own mouth run dry.

Whatever expression he made when _that_ revelation came to pass made Stakar’s sober up a little, more concerned, more inquisitive, and it made Yondu look away again, back out the window. The swindler’d moved onto card games, now, and had drawn a few more people in. “Who’d be dumb enough to try an’ play _me_? Skrulls ain’t that stupid, you know that as well as I do.”

That earned him another snort for his trouble, and he kept his shoulders from hitching up to his ears. “How’d your boys take the abrupt vacation?”

Yondu couldn’t keep himself from rolling his eyes. “They about fell over themselves tryna be the first out the hatch. It’s not as if they’re spendin’ the whole lot, but from the way they reacted you’d think they were. Idjits.” He’d made sure the crew’d had it drilled into their thick skulls that they were only allowed ten thousand credits each, maximum, and at two hundred an’ fifty-three men that meant two hundred an’ fifty-three thousand out of the lot of six million. Yondu had no qualms about blowing it all if it meant he didn’t have to lay a finger on Ego’s blood money ever again, but, he figured, if he’d managed to haggle it all out of him fair and square anyway (despite not planning on following through with their deal), then he might as well use some of it to better outfit the ship. Fuel, water, rations, mechanical equipment, _medical_ equipment, the works. After he was exiled, they didn’t have the power of the hordes at their backs, something to fall back on if they hit a rough patch or they died in the water out in the black, and it’d been rough. _Really_ rough. There’d been times when… well. There’d been times.

These weren’t those times.

He had to consciously stop himself from digging his nails too deeply into his palms, and wiped away what little blood’d managed to bead at the surface.

“Six million, eh.” Again with the flat, statement-sounding sentences. He knew Stakar was waiting on an explanation – a better one, really – since that was why he’d been called here in the first place.

Rather than having Stakar decide to come to even _more_ incorrect conclusions than he’d probably already come to in the time between their call and Yondu reaching Contraxia, he grunted, turning on his heel to look him in the eye. They were calculating, and Stakar’s arms were crossed as he leaned against the ratty bed the room housed, one hand on his cigarette and puffing out smoke rings as he waited.

He didn’t have to wait long.

“He’s called Ego,” Yondu said, stuffing his own hands into the pockets of his coat. He wished he’d brought something to fiddle with for a hot second, and then immediately took that wish and threw it out. _Don’t get distracted._ “He’s a celestial. A living planet, in the Black Galaxy.”

“A celestial, eh?” Stakar said, sounding interested. “Thought they were all extinct.” _Oh, how I fucking wish._ “What’s a celestial want with a bunch of kids?”

“What do any a’ them want with anything?” Yondu shot back, bitter. “Power. Got some grand ol’ idea he calls the _expansion_ , wants to spread his influence as far as he can by fatherin’ as many _sprogs_ as he can. He contacted me about bringing ‘im one, then sent me a list with ten thousand.”

“Ten _thousand_?!” From his voice, he could tell he was as appalled as he was shocked; Yondu’d been, too, when he’d first gotten Ego’s message. “I thought you said twenty!”

“Twenty is how many he sent me the pre-payments for,” Yondu specified. It was easier to talk plainly with Stakar when the man was actually listening to him when he spoke instead of shutting him down. _If only he’d done the same before, eh? Contraxia, Contraxia._ “700,000 a pop, with a 300,000 pre-payment each for the first batch. Can’t haggle for shit; I gave him a number, an’ he agreed, no argument. Pretty sure he just wants those kids, no matter the cost.”

Stakar looked sick, and he spat on the floor, the pink carpet stained with who knew how many things. “Can’t imagine anyone paying that much for that many bodies has good intentions, even beyond this 'expansion' idea.”

“I mean, he tried it,” Yondu said with a shrug, while Stakar started to pace. “Started off tellin’ me how he had some sprogs out there who’d lost their mommas an’ he wanted ‘em back with him so he could be a ‘part of their lives’ or whatever the fuck. Didn’t even add a caveat to bring ‘em in safe. He made it sound like he was aimin’ for ten or so, but, no matter what pretty paper you wrap it up in, it’s still movin’ bodies, an’ I think he knew that, an’ he knew that _I_ knew that, but I figure, if I don’t agree, he’s gonna find some other poor sap to fall for his spiel, either ‘cause they’re greedy or think it’s a decent sob story or both” – _like me_ , he failed to say – “so I convinced him I’d do it – for a fee, o’ course.”

“And, what – he trusted you enough to send you a list of _ten thousand kids_?”

“Nah.” Yondu waved that off. “I talked him into _that_. See, he was plannin’ on sendin’ through the coordinates one at a time. I said no, that won’t do, I’m not wastin’ fuel like that, an’ when he asked how many would be reasonable the first thing he suggested was fifty. Like _fuckin’ cargo_.” He couldn’t stop himself from scowling at the words. “I told him I’d bring ‘im twenty instead. I was tryna get as many coordinates as I could without bein’ too eager, an’ he said he was gonna send the list through with more than we’d agreed on, but I wasn’t expecting ten _thousand_.” And he really, really hadn’t been. They were separated by galaxy, quadrant, empire if applicable, and then solar system and planet, all of them. When he’d eventually found it in himself to track Pete down through the thousands of names, he’d discovered the celestial’d managed to infect Jupiter and Pluto, too, without him ever knowing it. _Chuck ‘n Marty’ll like that, I’m sure._ “I was only expectin’ the twenty, maybe fifty or a hundred if he was feelin’ generous.” A humorless snort. “Guess I’m just that good of an actor.”

“And why’d you ask for a list, again?” Stakar pressed, and Yondu heard the pretend lightness in the tone, under the very real exasperation, but ignored it with all the strength he could muster. _Fucking incorrect conclusions, just like I expected, you gods-damned hardass._

“And risk not knowing what other kids he’s got his eyes on after he realizes I’ve pulled one over him?” he said, doing his best not to snap. He gestured rudely. “Are you _shitting me_ , Stakar? I already told you I took the job in the first place to keep ‘im from draggin’ in anyone else to do his dirty work, who knows how many he’s killed already! I admit ten thousand is more than the hordes can handle, but ain’t it better t’have the coordinates for as many as possible so we can try an’ protect them from what he’d _do_?”

Stakar flicked some ash from the end of his cigarette, and took a very long drag, while Yondu made an effort to calm the anger simmering under his skin. His temper was dangerous at the best of times, and letting it out now wouldn’t do anyone any favors. “There’s somethin’ you’re not telling me.”

Yondu blinked. “What?”

Stakar stopped pacing to give him a look. _The_ look, the one that meant he’d better stop bullshitting or he’d put a gun to his head with the safety off. “You heard me, Yondu. What aren’t you saying? You’re hiding somethin’ from me.”

His heart skipped a beat. “I ain’t hidin’ shit–!”

“How did you know about this Ego’s plans?” Stakar spoke, sharp and cutting, and Yondu ground his teeth. He _knew_ he shouldn’t’ve said it, but giving Stakar all the information from the start was the best way to keep him from demanding more. He’d been hoping the ‘list of ten thousand kids’ revelation would distract him from _that_ particular detail, but apparently that was simply too much to ask for. “This _expansion_? He wouldn’t’ve told you that, not if he was planning on using the ‘distant and apologetic father’ excuse from the start, and I can’t imagine him telling you no matter how good of an actor you were in convincing him to let you take the job and give you that list. So _how_ ,” he stated, taking a step forward, and Yondu straightened up instinctively so he wouldn’t reel back at just how predatory he found the movement. He couldn’t tell if Stakar noticed or not, but it didn’t stop him from speaking the rest of his sentence, deep and foreboding and accusatory and it made Yondu want to _scream_. “Did you _know_?”

“Fuckin’ _rumors_ , Stakar, you know how much those fuckers on Knowhere an’ Intiri like to talk–”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Stakar ordered, with enough gravitas to make Yondu’s mouth click shut and his shoulders hunch. “Lie. To me, Yondu.”

“I _ain’t_ –” _Another lie, you gods-damned traitorous child-trafficking son of a–_

“ _Captain Udonta_!” the man roared, in a way so similar to how he’d said it at his trial _before_ that it made him bow his head. He could feel himself shakin’, gods, it’s been _years_ , how was he _still_ reacting like this at the smallest sign of disappointment? He thought he’d gotten over it after… after… well, he knew he hadn’t, their confrontation on the same damn planet they were on now _before_ ’d been enough proof of _that_ , but he thought he’d…

His blood was rushing in his ears, so loud he almost didn’t hear Stakar approach with those ridiculously soft steps he took for someone his size, and he forced himself not to flinch when his hand came up to clap him on the shoulder. He didn’t quite manage it, as evidenced by the pointed pause Stakar let linger for a moment or two between them, before he spoke. His voice was as quiet as his footsteps had been. “Yondu.”

 _Sweet merciful gods._ He raised both hands to scrub at his face.

He was a grown ass man. He’d been captain of his own crew and ship for twenty-nine years. _He’d been captain of his own crew and ship for two years._ He’d been exiled, he’d been mutinied, he’d helped stop a Kree warlord from wiping Xandar off the map and a power-hungry celestial from finishing the job in countless other systems. _He’d been welcomed into the hordes with open arms, had a crew who followed his orders, and had never set foot on Xandar, or Ego, since his appointment._ He’d raised a gods-damned, bratty, no-good, trouble-making Terran with a penchant for heroics. _He’d never met a Terran in his life._

He’d died.

_This wasn’t part of the plan, this wasn't, this wasn't–_

He let his hands fall to his sides, fixed his spine as upright as he could get it, and stared blearily at Stakar’s chest, at the leather buckles and loops in his direct eyeline. Stakar was still, irritatingly, a head taller than him. “I can’t.” Miz Quill’d kill him, for one. The woman was a dab hand at using whatever was closest to smack you upside the head, let alone to disembowel you.

“Is this Ego character blackmailing you?”

 _Oh._ “No, nuthin’ like that.” Though that would be almost the better option…

“Then _tell me_.”

“I _can’t_ , Stakar, I just–” Everything would fall to shit, Yondu’d just been supposed to bring him up to speed on Ego and the kids, supposed to convince him to take on the kid-ferrying operation, he’d given away too much, said too much, he wasn’t supposed to tell him _this_ , he’d insist on being involved in _everything_ , he’d ruin _everything_ –

“Yondu.” He successfully hid his flinch this time when Stakar’s other hand came up to clap his other shoulder, and the man tried catching his eye to no avail. Yondu’d had time to practice, where Stakar had not. “I know you’re not followin’ through on his little job. I believe you on that.”

Yondu was so relieved his knees almost buckled at the words ( _he’d done it, he’d actually fucking convinced him_ ), but Stakar wasn’t done; “But there’s something there, something that’s eatin’ away at you, and I need to know what it is if you want me to help. And I _will_ help, Yondu, I promise you that.”

_That’s the problem._

He forced his breaths to come even, and precise, for a minute, and then another.

“I need you to swear to me.” _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

He was still staring at Stakar’s chest, counting the stitches, as he tried to find some way to tell the part of himself screaming that this was the worst idea he’d ever had even beyond taking Ego’s job in the first place to shut the fuck _up_. “I need you to swear to me, Stakar–” _Miz Quill’s going to take my arrow and shove it so far down my throat I’ll be shitting yaka for weeks._

“Of course–”

“–because if this gets out, I–” He swallowed once, twice. “It can’t get out. It _can’t_.”

“I understand, Yondu–”

“ _And_ ,” he tacked on harshly, lifting one hand to poke a finger into Stakar’s chest. “I need you to actually _fucking listen_ for once, you understand? Don’t go drawin’ your own conclusions without all the information again, gods-dammit, because if I don’t say it now I won’t say it again. You’re fucking lucky I can’t lie to you anyway, you fucking…”

“Yondu.” Stakar grabbed the raised hand and lowered it back down to his side, and thumped his fist twice into his chest. _The salute._ “I swear, on my life, and the life of my crew. Whatever this is, _it will not leave this room_.”

It was quiet again, as quiet as it ever got on Contraxia, even from this high up, and through the breaths he was taking in an attempt to keep from descending into a full-blown episode he could hear that the swindler across the way had finally been exposed, and was being run off the street by their patrons. In a moment of hysteria, he figured he’d be being run off soon, too, after exposing his own damn self, because he couldn’t keep his big mouth _shut_.


	5. Phase 2.3, 3.1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He was left walking the rest of his anger off before he really_ did _kill someone, and with one less problem and two more on the portable view screen in his hands._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~*~drama~*~ for the first half-ish anyway lmao. after that its oc time. I'm trying not to make them like, a huge part of the story? like I don't want to make this an oc story that takes place in the mcu, bc its really supposed to be about yondu & meredith being gay, doing crimes, killing celestials, the usual, but I get the feeling they're gonna wind up raising more kids than peter in the middle of that so uh. oh well. I haven't gotten that far yet lol. enjoy <3

It took some long, _loud_ hours to get through the whole sordid tale from bloody start to bloodier finish, made even longer and louder because Stakar, despite being _given his word_ , asked enough questions to make Yondu want to wring his neck. They were all clarifying questions, not ones questioning his legitimacy or whether he was telling the truth, but it was still mighty irritating getting interrupted as he spoke.

“The main thing was convincin’ him to hand over more than one set a’ coordinates at a time,” Yondu, eventually, concluded, ignoring how hoarse his voice’d become. He’d been maneuvered to the edge of the room’s bed by then, with Stakar taking up in front of him in a chair he’d dragged over. Neither of them’d moved in just as long; he could feel how stiff his legs were. “And convincin’ _you_ t’listen first an’ react later.”

That earned him some rolled eyes that he managed to chuckle at, even though it wasn’t really funny. None of this was.

“Alright,” Stakar said, sounding resigned, and he rubbed at his brow while Yondu raised one of his own. “Alright.”

“Tha’s _it_?” he said, incredulous, and kept himself from sputtering when Stakar just gave him an unimpressed and exhausted look in response. “Don’t look at me like that! I just–” _Bared my fucking soul to you_ , he didn’t say, but had a feeling Stakar gathered as much despite it. “–an’ all you can say is ‘ _alright_ ’?”

“Whaddayou want me to say, Yondu?” And, yeah, he was using the same tone he’d used whenever he and Marty got into some kinda capital-S _situation_ that he had to drag them out of kicking and screaming. “That your story is beyond far-fetched? That this was the last thing I expected when I saw your contact pop up on my view screen? That now I’m tryna think of the logistics of bringing all the hordes in to take care of your genocidal celestial–?”

“ _My_ fuckin’ ce– _don’t_ call him that,” Yondu spat, and curled his lip and sat a little more upright when Stakar had the gall to smirk at him. “And no, _no_ , you are _not_ bringing all the hordes in to handle Ego, at all, ever–”

“That’s not your call.”

And gods, Yondu’d forgotten just how much he _hated_ Stakar’s ‘I know better than you’ face. “Actually, I think you’ll find it _is_ my call, an’ actually it’s _only_ my call, since I weren’t supposed to tell you jack shit about none a’ this _anyway_ , an’ if you go gettin’ involved, let alone get any a’ the _others_ involved–”

“Then it ruins you an’ your Miz Quill’s little plan, yes, I know.” Didn’t sound like it, though. In fact, it sounded like he was _humoring_ him. Like he _fucking always_ did.

Yondu ground his teeth. He could feel one of his eyelids twitching. “So help me, Stakar, you are not ruining this for me.”

“I wouldn’t–”

“ _Yes you would_!” he snapped, leaping to his feet. Stakar didn’t seem especially surprised by his outburst, which made him _seethe_ , but he did lean back in his chair, and Yondu forced himself to keep his clenched fists at his sides instead of hurtling towards Stakar’s lapels to shake him senseless. The emotional vulnerability of spilling his memories, his _insides_ to the man who’d meant so much to him a lifetime ago (and still, quietly, meant so much to him now) and still having him just not. Fucking. _Listen_ , despite having him _swear on his crew_ , was inching him ever closer to punching him right in his already-crooked nose. “You _always do_! The second you stick your fingers in someone else’s pie everything goes to _shit_ , every time! Everyone has to do everything _your_ way, because your way’s the _best_ way, an’ anythin' anyone else says don’t matter ‘cause _you’re_ the most important, you’re the boss, you’re the one who makes the rules, you’re the one everyone has to listen to, _and if you interrupt me right now I will break your fucking jaw_.”

Stakar shut his mouth.

Yondu let himself breathe, for one gods-damned second. “That is your _fucking_ problem, Stakar. You can’t never be wrong. You always gotta be top dog – number one, almighty leader, the one everyone goes to for help, the one with the advice, the one to dictate, to order, to shuffle around. The second anyone takes that script an’ flips it, or tries to do shit the way _they_ want to, they’re a problem. An' I know, I fuckin’ KNOW the code’s important, the code’s _everything_ keepin' us from fallin' to fuckin' shambles, but you can’t look me in the eye an’ tell me it’s not about control, ‘cause I fuckin’ _know_ it is.”

Another pause for breath, during which Yondu forced himself not to clear his throat against the way it was protesting his volume and watched Stakar fold his arms, the second of which was done with something akin to a _very_ deep sense of personal satisfaction. “An’ I get it. I do. I hadta deal with a fuckin’ mutiny, watch half my men get spaced with no way a’ stoppin’ it, an' from the moment it started to right now, I’ve thought to myself: if I was just more of an asshole. Just more violent. More _controlling_. Set more of an example. Was a better captain. Demanded more respect, more loyalty, or was harsher on the boy, or more willin’ t’just _take that job_ , even when I _knew_ it wasn't right to, even when I _knew_ what was happenin’, even when I _knew_ those motherfuckers I was forced to let onboard after losin’ too many men wouldn’ta cared none, an’ just wanted the credits it gottem. Maybe then, it wouldn’ta happened. Maybe then, I’d still be there, watchin’ my boy blubber over his girl an’ be a dumbass with his other dumbass friends, tryna save the universe again.

“But I’m _not_ there. I’m here, twenty-somethin’ years in the past, with a cancer-ridden Terran woman who knows more a' my dirty little secrets than _I_ do on the other side a’ the galaxy doin’ her ever-best tryna find a way to throttle Ego’s hold on her planet while I handle _my_ halfa the deal. An' _my_ halfa the deal,” he said, lowering his voice to an almost-hiss, “is t’get _you_ on my side, an' keep up the ruse, an' pick up as many kids as I can in the jumps between here an’ Terra just in case we can’t stop him this time. An' no part a' that deal involves you stickin’ your nose where it’s not wanted, you gods-damned _hardass_ , so I'm only gonna say this one more time: you. Are _not_. Ruining this for me.”

Yondu straightened up from where he’d been bending to get in Stakar’s face, and raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. His whole body felt tense as a bow string, strung the fuck out and ready to snap the moment something set him off. His arrow, in its holster under his coat, was humming at his side, a comforting warmth though his leathers that gave away just how furious he was.

“Yondu–”

“I don’t wanna _fuckin’ hear it_ –!”

“ _Enough_.” And then Stakar was on his feet, raising a hand to wave him down like he was some kinda feral animal, and it made him snarl like one. They were only a foot from each other now they were both standing, and he narrowed his eyes when he saw the solar wings on Stakar’s shoulders spark. They hadn’t all through Yondu’s tale, even when he’d told him he’d exiled him personally for _actually_ trafficking kids to Ego the first go ‘round, even when he’d told him he’d died, and seeing them now made him want to sneer. _Figures he’d be most pissed about someone talkin’ back, what a FUCKIN’ hypocrite–_ “You’re right.”

A beat. “Come again?”

Stakar rolled his eyes, and the sparking stopped. “Don’t make me say it again.”

“Sorry if I’m not used to the _great_ Stakar Ogord admitting when he’s wrong,” Yondu crowed, but couldn’t bring himself to muster even the tiniest smile about it. His stomach was still twisting with rage as it slowly bled out of him. He had to admit himself, hearing the man say that out loud had shocked a lot of it into wisps of smoke from the raging fire it’d been. “Especially to someone’s _face_ –”

“Oh, shut up, you little shit,” Stakar said, sounding almost grumpy, and reached over to smack his arm. Yondu didn’t flinch, and didn’t feel the need to, when he did so. “I won’t get involved in you and your missus’ little operation.”

Yondu gagged. “ _Don’t_ call 'er that. She hears you, she’ll saw your balls off herself, with or without my help.”

That had Stakar cracking up, like it was the funniest thing he’d heard all day, and Yondu allowed himself a small, wicked smile as he imagined Miz Quill doing just that. Disgusting, yet satisfying.

He had Stakar swear again, three separate times and on three separate things – his honor, his ship, and his marriage, in that order, though that last one was a bit dodgy even at the best of times, since he and Aleta had so many on-and-off cycles that Yondu wondered if Mainframe was still running that betting ring on it, and if he could chip in his two credits – before he was, reluctantly, appeased that the man was really, genuinely going to keep everything to himself, and wouldn’t be doing anymore to get in the middle of their plot to kill a celestial than what they’d agreed he could get in the middle of: getting all the kid-friendly factions onboard to help them get those kids off-world and out of Ego’s line of sight for the time being. It was why he’d told him about Ego’s whole ‘expansion’ situation in the first place (despite how much that’d backfired on him…), so they could hold as many of them as their ships could carry until their daddy was dead and gone and they could be returned to their homes.

With a list of ten thousand that plan wasn’t really _feasible_ , now, but Stakar was still going to do his best to gather up as many as he could between the hordes and prepare for the worst despite that. He wouldn’t be able to tell anyone the details on why, beyond “their daddy was trying to traffic them with _us_ , and had way too much info on them for someone who’d never even spoken to them before to be harmless”, but that was all Yondu could’ve asked for, at this point. He guessed whatever’d he’d said during his, uh, _monologue_ was enough to convince him not to argue too much. (Or maybe he just wasn’t used to being spoken back to, other than from Aleta. He distinctly remembered starting some shit, back before he’d been made a captain, but this time it’d felt… crueler. More raw.)

(He had to admit, though, that he felt lighter than he had in years, now, even with the specter of Ego dangling over him. Maybe screaming at Stakar was more therapeutic than he’d realized. He’d have to do this again sometime… with less lives hanging in the balance when he did.)

As a result, after sharing the list with Stakar and leaving him to do… whatever it was he did when he stayed at _The Hidean_ , he stepped out of the building at near enough midnight standard with his arrow circling his head again urging any particularly enthusiastic customers to just try it. He was left walking the rest of his anger off before he really _did_ kill someone, and with one less problem and two more on the portable view screen in his hands.

Two of Ego’s kids, on Contraxia, at the same time. The first he was gonna be picking up and keeping safe and sound on the ship on the way to Terra.

Yondu’d been as excited about this part of the plan as he’d been about contacting Stakar, frankly, but Miz Quill’d been adamant. She’d insisted that the best way to keep the kids safe was to keep ‘em with them, while Yondu’d insisted that the _Eclector_ wasn’t exactly what one would call ‘ _safe_ ’, _do you or do you not remember when I first picked Pete up? You saw that, right? It was a fucking nightmare, he could fit into every nook and cranny I didn’t even know we had, I can’t believe he didn’t cut his own damn arm off_ , and then she’d slapped the back of his head and kept talking while he’d pouted and rubbed at the sore spot. Something something if we don’t manage to kill Ego those kids’ll be collateral as much as the rest of the universe’ll be (hence Stakar’s involvement), yadda yadda it’ll keep your crew from wondering why you’re picking up a random woman and her son from a backwater planet behind a Nova blockade and getting suspicious (which, okay, fair), blah blah if you’re so caught up on it than just pick up however many you can between where you are when you get the call and Earth instead of how many you can actually fit on the ship and we’ll go from there (ugh, why did she have to come up with _compromises_ ). “Easy peasy lemon squeezy,” she’d said, before making something called lemonade when he asked what the hell lemons were and laughing herself silly when he’d spat it back out and scrubbed at his mouth with the nearest dish brush, because _no_ amount a’ sugar was making that monstrosity edible, good gods, Terrans drank this for _fun_?

Explained a lot about Pete’s curiosity and utter lack of self-preservation, he reflected, before shaking his head and focusing back on the mission.

First stop was a bar closer to the hangar the crew’d docked in. It wasn’t the bar most folks coming through the hangar went to ( _that_ one was half a city block wide and had enough booze on tap to make a _Kronan_ black out), but it was near enough. Dinky little place, only one neon sign instead of ten, with a crooner outside and bustling with life _in_ side despite its admittedly dilapidated state. As the bar second closest to the hangar, _The Ingram_ was where everyone who wanted a drink but didn’t wanna walk far and didn’t wanna party went after disembarking.

He slipped the view screen back into his pocket, chucked the crooner one of the ten thousand credit-full chips he had on him for the night, and walked inside before they could notice.

The interior was much more taken care of than the ex, with shiny hardwood floors and walls with electric torches, signs pointing towards the restrooms, and a singular, almighty score board for the darts competition that was raging at the back of the establishment. He could see Tullk rearing back to take his shot with Kraglin off to the side, hiding a smirk behind a glass of blue liquor, and shook his head. Figures he’d turn those two loose with twenty thousand to blow between them and they’d decide to earn even more for their troubles. The A’askavarians they were up against had no idea what they were getting into.

He left them to it, pulling out an empty stool at the bar proper and waving down the bartender.

“What can I get’chu?”

 _Sytchee, Aryll. Species Demeklean, homeworld Komek, Andromeda Galaxy. Currently located on Contraxia, Milky Way Galaxy. Seventeen full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to illness at ten full solar cycles old. No current guardian._ A darker green than Greenie was, more olive than moss, with an indented nose that looked like a skull’s and dark tattoos itching up under her collar, as dark as her hair, which was pulled tight into a braid and came to a stop just above the back of her knees. ‘Might prove challenging’ was the note Ego’d left, and Yondu could only assume it was because she was one of the oldest on his little list, and wouldn’t be going anywhere without a fight. Or persuasion.

“Not tryna get drunk of my ass, tonight, so somethin’ sweet, if you please,” he said, rubbing at his throat when it twinged, and watched her turn to put something together. He heard a hoot and a holler from behind him, something about 'cheating' and 'orloni shit', and rolled his eyes.

“Here y’go,” and there was a heavy clunk as his requested drink was placed in front of him, as red as his fin and bubbling with seltzer.

He stared at it. “Wha’s in it?” he asked, dubious, before she could go and serve someone else.

“Carbonated luran cherry juice, Tulaberry wine, ginger ale, and a shot of Yorminian brandy,” she explained, and, huh. “It’ll put’cha to sleep, though.”

“Shit.” Well. First time for everything. “Alright, then.” He grabbed the handle and brought the glass in closer. “You’re draggin’ me back t’my ship if I start slippin’, though, girl.”

That had her rolling her eyes. “I ain’t colorblind; I can see those men over there runnin’ those A’askavarians ragged. I assume their yours?”

He barked out a laugh; the red of his faction wasn’t exactly hard to pick out of a crowd. “Got me there, girlie. But I gotta talk t’you at some point tonight, anyway. Gotta job offer for ya. Somethin’ serious-like.”

“For your little boys’ club?” She didn’t sound impressed.

He grinned, unperturbed. “Nah. Ain’t got nuthin’ t’do with what’s downstairs, neither, if that’s what you’re worried about. Too old for that shit.”

She furrowed her eyebrows at him, but was called away by another patron before she could open her mouth. It took him a second to realize the look might’ve been because, here and now, he was physically less than ten years her senior, and not completely because she had to deal with creeps every damn night and didn’t believe a word out of his mouth, but by then she was preoccupied so he just shrugged and took a sip of the drink she’d made.

And holy _shit_. He made a face and wiped at his lips with the back of his sleeve. When he’d asked for ‘sweet’, he wasn’t expecting something that _coated his entire fucking mouth in sugar syrup_. He set the glass back down and pushed it a hands-width away, telling himself it was gonna be one of those drinks you let sweat all night and managed to only down half of before dawn because it was too dangerous.

Took a few minutes for her to come back around, during which Yondu took exactly one more sip of his drink (which was just as overwhelming as it was the first time, good gods) and watched Tullk and Kraglin utterly decimate the A’askavarian duo they’d put in a corner with open glee. One of those duos were significantly more inebriated than the other, and it sure as hell wasn’t his men. He could just _smell_ the fight raring to break out from here.

“I’m just gonna say,” he heard her before he saw her, and threw his head over his shoulder to raise an eyebrow at her as she leaned over the counter with both her hands pressed flat on the wood. “I don’t believe you.”

“Fair,” he admitted with a shrug. The old him probably woulda started some shit, something like _what, I don’t look enough of a kind ol’ soul for your tastes_ , but he was on a schedule here. “Ain’t exactly known for my honesty, girlie.”

“And stop callin’ me that.”

He let himself grin. “Sure. So long’s you gimme two minutes to share my piece.”

She stared at him for a good, long second, before tapping her fingers on the top of the bar. “Fine.”

He immediately whirled back around on his stool to face her properly and pulled the view screen out of his pocket in one fell swoop. He’d been planning on doing this outside, but he had a feeling she didn’t have the patience to wait that long. “Gotta client what’s lookin’ for you. Willin’ to pay more than enough credits to convince even the most staunch anti-traffickers t’consider it.”

Her skin tone paled to an ashy green. “You _what_?!” she hissed, leaning closer so the other patrons wouldn’t hear. “Who–”

“Calls himself Ego,” he told her, with equal care, folding his hands on top of the view screen and acting the composite professional. “He’s a self-obsessed maniac with enough power to level every known planet on a universal scale. He thinks I agreed to charter his list a’ sprogs to him in exchange for a fee; _I_ think I just finagled that fee outta him for nuthin’, ‘cause ain’t no amount a credits gettin’ me to follow through on that deal. You follow?”

“…Sprogs?” she eventually said, choked, and he opened the view screen to show her her own profile. As soon as she laid eyes on her own name, her own coordinates, all the information Ego had on her without her ever having known about it, she reeled back as if struck, and swallowed hard.

“Your momma ever tell you any ‘bout your daddy?” he asked, with more sympathy than he thought he had in him today, and took the view screen back when her hands started shaking.

“Rasjhan!” she shouted across the bar, staring at the floor. “I’m takin’ my break!”

“The fuck you takin’ your break for?” a masculine voice yelled back, stifled, probably from whatever kitchen they had behind the bar, but the girl was already moving, untying her apron and tearing it off to throw on the back counter with enough force to nearly rip the fabric and send more than a few empty glasses to the ground. No one came to stop her, though, and Yondu followed when she stormed out from behind the bar to the employee exit, next to the bathrooms.

The door led into an alleyway with more trash than slush on the ground, and his eyebrows rose when she snarled at the two dumpster divers trying to light the one next to the entrance on fire to _scram_ and they ran off with their tails between their legs. She was breathing heavy, and he shut the door behind them when she fell into a crouch, heels down with her head between her legs and her hands on the back of her neck, trying desperately to regain her composure. He kept a lookout while she did, and only had to scare away one curious interloper from the entrance to the alleyway off with his arrow before she lifted her head.

“I kinda wanna puke.”

He snorted. “Wouldn’t be the first; don’t think I had nuthin’ left in my stomach when he sent his fuckin’ list through.”

She breathed in and out once, twice, and then turned her head to look at him with a wrinkled forehead. “List?”

He nodded, stepping down off the little stairs that led to the door and sitting down with a grunt. He spread his legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles, and looked her in the eye. “But I don’t think you wanna see that.”

She didn’t answer for a few moments, then turned back to face forwards. “No. No, I think you’re right.”

They sat there, with each other’s company, listening to the sounds of Contraxia working around them in their little bubble, until she got back to her feet and faced him again. “Why are you here?” she finally said, sounding worn out.

“Well, figured I should warn you someone’s after ya,” he offered. “I’m plannin’ on tellin’ everyone else on that list of his the same. Also wanted t’see if you wanted to come with when we leave orbit; safety in numbers, change a’ location, have someone t’back you up, all that good shit. Or to confront him. You’re practically grown, you can look after yourself, make your own decisions, so I wanted t'give you all the options on the table here, but that job offer still stands, too.”

“Confront– I thought that ‘job offer’ was just an excuse to talk to me in private – which you didn’t even _need_ , since you told me right at the bar.” She sounded annoyed. It made him grin.

“Well, maybe.” He shrugged. “Don’t gotta be, though. Ravagers’re always lookin’ for new hires, in more low-life hellholes than Contraxia. Chuck’d like you; Krugs, too. You got that little–” He made a gesture he wasn’t sure properly came across, but was supposed to convey ‘you don’t put up with bullshit’. “Probably wouldn’t be as cushy as whatever gig you got here, but I know for a fact there wouldn’t be no more creeps sneakin’ hands up your legs or lookin’ down your shirt. We look out for our own; tha’s code.”

“Y’all got a code?”

His smile widened at the tone of disbelief in those words, but was interrupted by the sounds of a brawl spilling out the front of the building, and sighed as if put-upon before getting to his feet. (That would never get old: being able to stand more fluidly than he had in years in this younger body. His knees didn’t even click!) “Yeah, we gotta code – and that code says I gotta bail my two dumbass crewmen outta their mess before they get their asses kicked. C’mon.”

Tullk and Kraglin, he knew very fucking well, could handle themselves just fine, but a drunk and angry A’askavarian was a drunk and angry and _heavy_ A’askavarian, and Xandarians weren’t known for their strength. He only had to whistle his arrow through one of their frills to get them to screech and go pelting off, which wasn’t nearly as satisfying as he’d wanted it to be, but the offended glares he got from Tullk and Krags for stopping their fight before it could really start made him cackle.

“Hell, cap’n, you know we coulda handled those two! They weren’t nuthin’!” Kraglin whined, probably not even noticing the shiner starting to swell on his left eye.

“Aw, that don’t mean shit,” he snickered, directing his arrow back into its holster and wiping down his front, even though it wasn’t dirty. “We’re on vacation, boys, what’chu pickin’ fights for?”

Tullk rolled his eyes, spitting out the blood he’d accumulated thanks to his new missing tooth. “Technically, _we_ weren’t pickin’ fights, cap’n…”

“Oh, bull _shit_ ,” Yondu said, perfectly unbothered. He waved them on. “Go on, get. Find somewhere else t’run your li’l money-makin’ scheme, get, get.”

They did so, huffing like they were _actually_ mad, and he raised an eyebrow at the girl once they were out of earshot, watching her close her mouth from where it’d been hanging agape. “What’s got you outta sorts, sugar plum?”

That knocked her out of her funk better than anything else he coulda tried, and she gave him a look so unimpressed it would’ve put Aleta to shame. He barked out another laugh before she spoke; “What did you mean, ‘if I wanted to confront him’?”

It took him a second to remember what they’d been talking about before getting distracted, and he hummed. He and Miz Quill’d come up with two ways of convincing the kids to come with them as he moved the ship towards Terra: offering asylum and safety, and offering retribution. Yondu had a feeling the retribution would be a better bargaining chip than the safety, especially with Ego’s older kids. _Don’t you wanna know who your daddy is? Don’t you wanna tell him what you think? Don’t you think it was unfair how he left your momma and you on your lonesome? Don’t you wanna do something about it?_

The fact that none of those kids were getting within a parsec of Ego’s planetary orbit to follow through on that retribution so long as he had anything to say about it was neither here nor there. (It wasn’t like _he_ was gonna be telling them that.)

This kid, though, as he’d told her, was practically grown. She could decide for herself what she wanted to do, and Yondu wasn’t gonna force her off the planet and onto a ship if she didn’t wanna go, but he hadn’t been lying about her potential as a Ravager, either. They recruited as young as sixteen, after all. (Not that that’d mattered when he’d ‘recruited’ Pete, but… by then he’d been exiled anyway, so what did it matter how young his crew members were. Was what he told the crew. And himself.) “Well, do you?”

She blinked at him. “Do I… want to confront the man who left my mother to rot.”

“Mhm.”

“…And you said he has a whole list. Of other kids. That he wanted you to pick up. And bring to him.”

“Yup.” This was said with a popped ‘p’.

“…I’ll come with you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She shifted on her feet. “He’s ten years too late tryna close ranks on _my_ ass, and if he’s got a whole list than he’s fucked over more people than just us. It would be _incredibly_ satisfying shouting myself hoarse at him about that.” Didn’t he know it. “And you said, uh, that y’all don’t…” She didn’t say more than that, but he knew what she was gettin’ at.

“Nah. Like I said: tha’s code.” A pause, during which she looked thoughtful and contemplative. He ruined it by tacking on the addendum of, “We _are_ criminals, though.”

She grunted. “We get all types, here. So long as I don’t have to, uh, kill anyone…”

“Well, best chance a' that's with Krugarr. He only takes thief jobs, break-ins, shit like that.”

“Hm.” Another pause. “I should probably tell my boss I’m quitting then, huh?”

That set him off again, and, in the neon light of _The Ingram_ ’s sign, he saw Aryll smile.


	6. Phase 3.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _What was hysterical was that Yondu recognized the kid from the picture Ego had in his profile. They were the swindler he’d seen out the window of Stakar’s room at_ The Hidean _._
> 
> _Small fuckin’ world._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait (has it been a month? geez). I'm one of those people where their interests change every few months and everything they were working on dealing with the last interest is either put on the backburner or on permanent hiatus bc I just. never get back to it. I can't say it won't happen again but I'm hoping I get a little further this time before I focus on something else lmao
> 
> anyway this is like a precursor to the next chapter, which is like ~8k. idk if I'll publish that one soon or next week so either way, enjoy <3

Yondu had to wait for the girl to tell her boss she wasn’t coming back (during which he stood looking into the kitchen with his arrow in _very_ clear sight, ready and raring to go if the Gramosian so much as thought about raising a hand to her) and to pack whatever meager belongings she had in her shoebox apartment a few blocks down the way (enough to stuff into a tiny duffel, which would’ve been pretty sad, if Yondu himself didn’t have all that much more himself in the way of things he could claim as _his_ ). After that, it was just a matter of tracking down the other kid that Ego had on Contraxia: this time, an actual Contraxian. Shocker.

What was hysterical was that Yondu recognized the kid from the picture Ego had in his profile. They were the swindler he’d seen out the window of Stakar’s room at _The Hidean_.

Small fuckin’ world.

As they walked, he let Aryll ask him any questions she had, most of which were about the Ravagers, funnily enough. Seemed she was taking his offer seriously. _Good for her._

“I’d call him up,” Yondu said, about Krugarr, who he was planning on introducing the girl to at some point in the future. “But I think he’s on a deep space mission for the next few months. Nuthin’ gettin’ in, nuthin’ gettin’ out, utmost secrecy, big prize at the end, all that fun shit.” He couldn’t clearly remember if he actually was on one of those missions right now (it’d been over twenty years, give him some slack), but it was more likely to be the case than it wasn’t; Krugs was the only one who took those missions with any kind of regularity.

The understanding noise she let out at the information sounded disappointed, but not surprised, and he knocked his shoulder to hers. “Ah, don’t let it get’cha down, kid. A few months on my ship an’ his’ll look like a gods-damned paradise.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” she grumbled, not quietly enough, and he snickered. “Why are we looking for this kid again?”

“Same reason I tracked you down,” he said, peering into an alleyway as they passed and moving on when he couldn’t see anything inside that looked like a body. “Give ‘em a chance to get off this frozen rock, confront their old man, an’ spit in his face.”

“Sure you ain’t just roundin’ us up to drop us into his lap for real?” He didn’t hear any true suspicion in her voice, but he still turned to her seriously.

“You want my word?”

She looked him up and down. “And how much is your word worth?”

“To a civilian? Jack shit. To a _Ravager_?” He spat in his palm and held it out for her to shake, and smirked when she instinctively recoiled. It was a move he’d stolen from Pete, back when he was still half-terrified of everything but the view ports on the ship. There was that pinky-promise thing he’d done as a kid, and then the spit-shake he’d insisted on as a growing boy, because pinky-promises weren’t _cool_ anymore, whatever _that_ meant. _Terrans are so fuckin’ weird._ “Shake on it?”

He was pleasantly surprised when she spit in her own palm and took his outstretched hand, giving it one good shake. His smirk only widened when she immediately grimaced and wiped her hand on her pant leg, stifling laughter at the peeved expression she gave him. “I ain’t handin’ you over, girl, an’ I ain’t handin’ none a’ your siblings over, neither. Your daddy’s a fuckin’ jackass.”

She snorted as they started walking again. She was still trying to get their combined saliva off of her hand. “You could say that again.”

They kept at it for a few more blocks, checking every alleyway they passed, until they started hearing what every Ravager recognized: the beginnings of a brawl. Seemed the kid’d managed to piss off a couple more customers with their card tricks.

The two of them shared a look, and hustled in the direction the shouted expletives were coming from.

They cut through another alley to get there, and Yondu very nearly fell flat on his ass when a weight slammed into him with the force of a small M-ship just as they were about to come out the other end. He managed to stay on his feet by the skin of his teeth, and by Aryll thinking quick and grabbing the lapels of his coat to haul him back upright. By the time he’d actually caught himself and wrapped his arms tight around whatever the _fuck_ ’d barreled into him at that speed, the uppity crowd was at the mouth of the alleyway, baying for blood.

“A’right, a’right – A’RIGHT!” he bellowed, with enough authority to make everyone shut the fuck up and stop moving. A few of them even cowered into themselves, to his disgust. _If you’re willin’ t’chase a kid down for money, then you best be prepared for every eventuality, assholes._ When the little shit in his arms finally stopped struggling, he set them back down on their feet with a huff, keeping one hand curled in their collar to keep them from scampering off again. They were shaking with adrenaline, but didn’t seem scared, which was more than he would’ve asked for, originally.

He dug around in his coat pocket, pulling out another credit chip chock full of Ego’s blood money, another ten thousand’s worth, and hucked it into the crowd with his whole arm behind it. He was pleased to see it hit some son of a bitch right between their three eyes. “If you want your refund so bad then jus’ _fuckin’ take it_. We’re done here.”

And then he turned on his heel and started hauling their little swindler out the other way, ignoring the sounds of a new fight taking place over who was gonna get the credit chip. _Greedy motherfuckers're the same everywhere._

The fact that he was also a greedy motherfucker wasn’t what was important here.

“ _Why did you do that?!_ ” Aryll hissed, sounding breathless as they turned the corner onto the street proper. She was walking at his side, staring between him and the kid with disbelief. “How much did you _give_ them?”

Yondu grunted, keeping his grip on the kid’s collar as tight as he dared, and spared them a glance.

 _Okkudou-Masassa, Eschipp-Glimlii. Species Contraxian, homeworld Contraxia, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Contraxia, Milky Way Galaxy. Fifteen full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to illness at eight full solar cycles old. No current guardian._ Limp black hair hanging to the shoulders and hiding the eyes, skin split straight down the middle yellow and reddish-purple, cleft lip that did nothing to hide the growing smile on their face. They just _screamed_ ‘little shit’, and _he_ could just feel a migraine coming on.

“Look, little shit,” he began roughly. “I appreciate a good money-makin’ scheme as much as the next sonuvabitch, but you _gotta_ find some new material.” And then he let go of their collar and cuffed them on the back of the head for good measure.

If anything, their smile widened, showing off two sets of canines, as yellow as his but without the metal replacements. “Sure, boss. Any ideas?”

He rolled his eyes and kept walking, not bothering to wait for his two tagalongs to follow, because he knew they would be. Their shoes crunched in the slush and snow as they did. “Ain’tcher boss. Sixteen’s the minimum.”

“I’m turning sixteen next week!”

“No, ya ain’t.” And there he was, stoppin’ again, so he could pull the view screen back out and show the kid the profile Ego’d compiled on them. The one that said their birth date wasn’t for another three months. The one that had their location pinpointed to the gutter they slept in most often. The one that had a note suggesting he lure them in with food. The smile slowly dimmed as they read, until they were outright frowning.

“How’d you get that?” they asked, less perturbed and more curious than anything, but Yondu could see their foot start tapping, their fingers start flexing at their sides. He knew they’d book it given a reason, and, younger body or not, he was no match for a hopped-up fifteen year old who thought they were running for their life. He had to tread carefully.

“What’chu know ‘bout your daddy?” he asked, tucking the view screen away again, and watched the kid’s lips curl.

“Ma had nuthin’ but praise for the fucker, but I ain’t never met him. Why?”

“Who you think paid me to pick your ass up? Thanos?”

The kid made a face. “He _paid_ you to pick me up? Couldn’t he’ve just come himself, if he was goin’ through the trouble?”

“You’d think, huh,” Aryll muttered, and stared off into space, probably fantasizing about how she’d give Ego what-for, completely ignoring the look the kid was giving her.

“I ain’t plannin’ on deliverin’ ya, kid,” Yondu told them, getting their attention back. “Jus’ figured I should let’chu know there’s someone out there who knows who you are, an’ knows _where_ you are. The idea was to give y’the choice a’ comin’ with, either for your own protection or to tell your old man a thing or two or ten or twenty, like Sugar, here–”

“Oh, don’t call me _that_ –”

“I’m in.” Without even a second’s hesitation. _Ego’s sure left a lot of grudges on his fuck-spree through the universe, huh._

Eschipp-Glimlii cocked their head at him. “But whaddayou mean she’d be having words with him, too?”

And thus started the breakdown of Ego’s fuck-spree through the universe on their way back to the hangar, which Yondu felt he really shouldn’t be explaining to a fifteen-year old, but, hey. The kid’d been living on the streets since their momma died, they’ve seen some shit. There was a quick pit-stop to grab the entirety of the kid’s worldly possessions from the aforementioned preferred gutter, which basically boiled down to another equally ragged pair of clothes and a framed photo (an _actual_ photo) of his momma hidden under a storm grate, before they were really off, and by then it was verging on two in the morning and Yondu was starting to flag. Combine being up at three standard yesterday morning, dealing with Ego and the stress that came with him, getting drunk off his ass and passing out but getting no _real_ rest, dealing with Stakar twice and the stress that came with _him_ , and then running wild trying to convince his two tagalongs to… well, tag along, he was feeling each and every one of those hours down to his bones.

They reached the hangar none the worse for wear, though. The kid (who insisted they be called E.G instead of their full name, “because it’s a damn mouthful”) just asked a lotta questions, same as Aryll did – and, same as Aryll did, most of them were about the Ravagers, not Ego. Yondu couldn’t tell if it was because the kid was just that apathetic about the whole situation, or if they just cared more about getting hands-on training to sharpen their thieving skills, but he couldn’t bring himself to care either way. They were still three months short of the age requirement, and until then they’d have to settle for following Aryll around like a lost puppy while she did _her_ duties.

Something he told them.

Six times.

Before they were even on their shuttle back to the ship.

“No amount a’ beggin’, pleadin’, threatnin’ or _seducin_ ’ll get’cha to convince me, kid, full stop, no more argument, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred credits, you are a _child_ and that is _disgusting_ ,” he growled, piloting them up to the _Eclector_. “An’ if you keep _tryin’_ I’m gonna string you from your ankles in the galley an’ let the crew throw shit at you – an’ if you keep tryin’ for my _arrow_ , it’ll be from your _insides_.”

E.G blinked all innocent-like at his glare, but let Aryll grab their arm and shove them back into their seat from where they’d been reaching for his holster without kicking a fuss. “My tolerance for bullshit is _very_ high,” she told them sweetly, giving them a very kind smile that made them freeze up. “And you are testing it _very_ much.”

“Look, kid, if Herschk gives you a tour ‘round the ship once we dock, will you shut the fuck up for the rest of the day? Just until I wake back up proper, for the love of whatever gods’re up there,” Yondu groaned, settling in to bring them to port, and wondered how it’d gotten to this point, that he couldn’t deal with a single teenager without resorting to bribery. Had he done this with Pete when he was fifteen? He couldn’t remember, so many of those years were full of trying to shake some sense into his dumb rebellious ass and trying to keep him from sleeping with anything that moved…

It seemed to do the trick, though, since E.G mimed zipping their lips shut and throwing away the key, and let Yondu pull up to the _Eclector_ and dock the shuttle without another word. After that it was just a matter of shutting her down and exiting into the shuttle bay in the belly of the beast.

Herschk, the one left to watch the ship (as the only one on the crew who couldn’t care less about shore leave, but Yondu suspected it was actually because the Kallusian liked having the ship to himself to do his knitting without getting picked at for it), was there to greet them, having had to open the bay doors to let them in in the first place, and he looked between Yondu and his two curious charges after giving him the salute with a cocked head.

“Ah… cap’n?”

“Herschk,” Yondu grunted, gesturing to Aryll and E.G. “These two’re a coupla Ego’s kids. Figured we should bring ‘em up to speed, get ‘em settled outta his jurisdiction, so he can’t go grabbin’ ‘em himself. Got it all situated with Ogord; he’s agreed to bring in a few other factions t’do the same. Both of ‘em are plannin’ on joinin’ the hordes, too, come the _age requirement_.” This was said with a pointed glance at E.G, who said nothing to dispute it. “ _So_ – care t’give ‘em a tour a’ their new digs?”

Herschk’s confusion soothed into understanding immediately, and he took to the idea with aplomb. “Certainly, cap’n!”

“That means don’t give ‘im no trouble, you two,” he ordered them, and, when E.G’s face went carefully blank, added, “Because I _will_ know, an’ you haven’t seen me nowhere _near_ angry yet.” He sniffed. “This one’s got sticky fingers, Herschk, you watch ‘em. You too, cherry bomb.”

Aryll spared him a withering look, but Herschk started talking before she could open her mouth. “Aye, cap’n. C’mon, then, folks, we’ll get’cha settled in some spare rooms, first, then I’ll show ya the galley…” And they were off, with Herschk happily offering explanations to their questions and leading them out without a backwards glance.

As soon as the automatic door closed, he let out a sigh he could feel from the tips of his ears to the soles of his boots, and sagged with a weight that made him want to sink into the floor and become nothing more than an exhausted heap of red leather. He was finally back in familiar territory, and didn’t have to watch his or anyone else’s back for the next few hours, and he’d managed to talk a lick of sense into Stakar, and had put the third phase of his and Miz Quill’s plan into motion. Herschk would be telling the rest of the crew about the updated mission parameters while they trickled back onto the ship, and would be introducing their new roommates and ensuring no one was killed in the process, and he could finally, as much as he was able to, _relax_. It took everything in him to not just lie down right then and there and pass the fuck out for the foreseeable future.

He forced his legs to start walking, and found himself back in his quarters after what felt like both seconds and hours. He stripped to his skivvies without having to think, and was snoring loud enough to send the little baubles on his bedside table shivering practically the second his body hit the mattress.

\--

The next time he made it to the bridge, it was eleven and a half hours later, with a cup of coffee so strong it was practically sludge, and with the realization that E.G had somehow managed to worm their way onto the good side of everyone on the ship. Something about having the makings of a Ravager already and the crew wanting to cultivate their kleptomania rather than being offended their shit was getting stolen, he hadn’t been paying much attention. Aryll, the one he’d been a little worried about, had similarly basically been adopted as their shiny new rookie. His men weren’t used to dealing with female-presenting beings on a regular basis for anything but the raunchiest of dealings, it was the reason he’d told Herschk she was planning on joining the hordes, but luckily they actually _did_ know better than to lay hands on another Ravager, thank the gods. She was only staying with them until she could transfer into Krugarr’s faction, but from the way he caught the boys teaching her how to break down, clean, and put back together a plasma gun in the galley when he went for his coffee, he had a feeling they’d be devastated when she did.

A part of him found it hilarious.

Another part of him wondered where the hell this side of his crew’d been when he’d decided to keep Pete. Maybe it’d disappeared along with the third of his men that jumped ship when he was exiled. The third of his men who were actually _decent_.

(Well. Decent as far as Ravagers go, anyway. Ah, well.)

As it was, his two tagalongs seemed to be settling in as well as could be expected. _He_ still felt like he could go for a few more hours sleep, and was crunching through his coffee like his life depended on it, but now…

Now, he had to plot the course for Terra, and start picking up more of Ego’s kids along the way.

Which included kids that were _actually_ kids, and not just teenagers that were grown enough to look out for themselves.

So _that_ was gonna be fun.

(Like he’d said: Miz Quill owed him _so much gods-damned liquor_.)

He spent the first few hours of his shift on the bridge plotting that course. The crew’d all managed to make it back onto the ship by the stated time, somehow, some way (“you ain’t back by noon, you’re on your own”), and were running through their checks as they prepared to leave atmo-dock and set back out. It gave him just enough time to figure out which jumps would get them from the clear other side of the Milky Way ( _fucking Contraxia_ ) to just outside Pluvian orbit, far enough away from the Nova blockade to not be picked up as a threat to the little dirt ball the Asgardians had so much interest in, in the least amount of time and putting the least amount of stress on the _Eclector_. She was bulky, but something her size couldn’t take as many jumps as an M-ship could, or as quickly, and for the sake of the crew he’d have to schedule breaks between each jump. He could still remember how his atoms were pinched and pulled and scrambled and twisted as he, Krags, Rat, and Twig pulled seven hundred jumps in one take _before_ ; he wouldn’t be going through _that_ again as long as he had anything to say about it, let alone putting anyone else through it.

Most of the jumps let out into dead zones, where the nearest populated planet was hundreds of parsecs away, or into zones where the only planets or moons nearby were uninhabited or nothing more than space ports, but – not counting the Terran system – nine of those let out close enough to a planet with one of Ego’s kids on it to pick them up without going out of the way, and the good news was none of those were so backwater they’d freak the fuck out over him touching down and talking to them. Some were just a _little_ backwater, so, hey. Small mercies.

The safest, most economical and time-saving course calculated out at something like one and a half months of travel, putting in time to let the ol’ gal recharge, refuel, restock for food, _and_ to pick the kids up, and by then the checks were done and they were ready to leave atmo. He plugged it into the navigation hub and stood, ignoring the urge to crack his back but letting himself roll his shoulders in an attempt to relieve the tension. Now he just had to bring the crew up to speed on the details of their new “mission”, and threaten them with Stakar if they thought he was bullshitting. He hated to pull that card – it made him feel like a spoiled brat just aching to tattle to someone – but nothing made a suspicious Ravager capitulate faster than claiming you had the strength of the admiralty on your side. _Sure, I COULD be lying, but if YOU wanna be the one to take it up with Ogord when I have his express permission, I won’t be responsible for whatever reaming he puts you through for wasting his time. Your choice._ Ass-kissy, but it worked. (And besides, hoisting problems off on Stakar was a family tradition. He hadn’t been able to do it since he was exiled _before_ , let him have this.)

The crew took his new announcement in stride as much as they took the last one in stride, which is to say they almost started a riot, but, like, an agreement riot. “I brought the son of a bitch’s list to Ogord” and “we came to an agreement” and “we’re covering every planet on the way from here to Terra” and “hence the newbies” and “if we’re good, we might even get to kick some ass”. The crew didn’t know Ego was a celestial; to them, he was just a shitty father with too many kids that he was planning on doing who knows what with, and not an arrogant, way-too-fucking-powerful god-like immortal being who could kill all of them in one fell swoop, so the idea of tracking him to his drop-off location and giving him what-for appealed to them very much. They didn’t need to know Yondu wasn’t gonna let them in on the action, they just had to agree to get the _Eclector_ there in one piece, and that was easy enough to do when all of them were already hanging onto his every word.

So.

Here they go.


	7. Phase 3.3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this might be the last one for a while, just bc I haven't gotten very far on the next chapter. writer's block is bleeding me dry y'all. this is 8k though! so hey
> 
> side note: I'm a fuckin nerd ;) enjoy <3

_Ereyunipatagonisalarorwakino, Wara. Species Myotan, homeworld Bazal, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Bazal, Milky Way Galaxy. Seven full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to difficulties during childbirth. Current guardians are maternal grandparents._ She was _tiny_ , hidden behind her grandmother, and wouldn’t’ve even reached his knee if not for the set of ears on the top of her head, big and blue on the inside, as blue as the insides of her equally tiny wings, her tongue, and her squinted, blind eyes. Myotans relied on their four ears to “see” – echolocation and all that, since they lived underground – and _he_ could only see what the cone of light from his flashlight revealed, which wasn’t much. The lack of vision had him on edge.

“We don’t exactly get many off-worlders here,” the grandmother, Lila, was saying as she bullied him into the kitchen of their little hovel and forced him into a carved stone seat at their carved stone dinner table. “You say you’re here about Wara?”

Yondu turned his light and his eyes to the girl, who was still clamped on her grandmother’s leg like and staring straight over his shoulder. “‘Fraid so. Don’t mean to bring up bad memories none, but it’s about her daddy.”

The grandmother took in a deep breath. “Ah.” There were a million subtleties in that one exhale, and he saw the girl quiver further into her protector’s skirts. “Him.”

“What about ‘im?” the grandfather, Puro, grunted, and he was loud enough about hobbling into the room that Yondu didn’t startle. When he took his own seat at the head of the table, it was with a three-pronged cane at his side and a sneer on his face. “He send you tryna ask forgiveness? ‘Cause he ain’t gettin’ it.”

“Puro,” Lila warned, in a resigned kind of voice, before turning from the counter and setting a tray of… _something_ in the center of the table and taking her own seat, pulling the girl into her lap as she did so. Yondu used the flashlight to try and get a better look at it, but all he could compare it to was very moldy, fungal-like slices of bread, with a lot of beetle shells. The girl immediately reached for one of these slices and started nibbling away at it, and he, wisely, chose to bite his tongue.

“He, uh… contacted me about bringin’ him the girl. Somethin’ about wantin’ t’be a part of her life, now–”

“Ha!” Puro’s laugh was short, sharp, and humorless, and Yondu heard him thump his cane on the ground hard enough to nearly crack it. “That’s rich, innit, Lila? What kinda jumped-up son of a bitch–”

“ _Puro_.”

“–does he think he is, thinking he can come in near a decade after he’s wanted, acting like everything’s water off the stalactite?”

“Well, all due respect, I know for a fact he’s lyin’,” Yondu offered, moving to take the view screen out from his pocket to show them before remembering that view screens were worthless to Myotans. “Tha’s just the excuse he gave me. Your granddaughter ain’t the only kid he contacted me over bringin’ to ‘im.” Before the old man could open his mouth to spew some more vitriol about the celestial, which Yondu would’ve been perfectly content to hear, he continued, “Your daughter ain’t the only mother he fucked over. Pardon my Contraxian.” That part was addressed to Lila, who the flashlight caught giving him a frown over the girl’s ears.

“You’re sure?” was what she said, also before her husband could get a word in edgewise, and Yondu nodded.

In case she couldn’t sense that nod, he further explained, “He sent through a list a’ kids after I was finished squeezin’ six million credits out of ‘im. It’s got thousands a’ names an’ coordinates on it – includin’ hers.” He gestured at the girl still in her grandmother’s lap, still nibbling away at her slice of fungus-bug-bread, and cocked his head when she shrunk a little. “Wants me to bring ‘em all t’him, at some point. I ain’t followin’ through on it – tha’s against code – but I came t’offer to hide her with my crew in case he comes for her himself, once he finds out I screwed ‘im over. The rest a’ my… fellow captains, they’re doin’ the same.”

The grandfather grunted again. “I ain’t buyin’ it.”

Lila reared her head, likely to tell him off again, but Puro kept talking; “I believe the man that left my daughter on her own, pregnant and lovesick, is as much of a maggot stain as you say he is – I’ve always believed that – but you, comin’ down here claimin’ you’re doin’ it outta the kindness of your heart? Nah.”

Yondu snorted. “Ain’t kindness what brought me here, old man, it’s that y’all were on the way to where we’re headed next. If that weren’t the case, I’d still be in the Elidra system, tryna convince my men they’ve had their fun.”

Said old man snorted, too, and then Lila spoke. “You really think he’d come here? For Wara?”

He refocused on where the flashlight was illuminating her, and saw her arms around her granddaughter, her face twisted with worry. He nodded, then remembered to say aloud, “I’ve no doubt, ma’am. An’ I’ve no doubt he’d do everythin’ in his power to take her. By force, if necessary.” _By force, almost certainly_ , he didn’t say, but he had a feeling the adults understood, as Puro growled, and Lila ducked her head, petting the girl’s tufts of fur. She’d stopped eating before finishing her food, and was trembling. “An’ tha’s if he don’t hire someone else to do it first. He’s got more’n enough credits to convince more upstandin’ men than me to take the bait.”

It was quiet for a few moments, during which Lila continued smoothing down her granddaughter’s hair, and the light picked up Puro reaching over from the darkness to grasp his wife’s arm.

“Alright,” she eventually whispered. “Alright.”

The whole affair was somber, like they were heading to a funeral, after the little family packed the girl a bag for the road full of changes of clothes and a few of her favorite playthings. They let him lead them back to where he’d parked his M-ship on the surface, only a few meters from the entrance back to the underground, close enough that the two adults would be able to find their way back the way they came when he took off. In the harsh sunlight of the desert overworld, he could see the girl’s ears flat against her head, and her lip wobbling in a way that could only be described as foreboding.

“Promise me, Captain Udonta,” Lila insisted, brushing her hands down the wrinkles in the girl’s clothes. He couldn’t tell if it was for her own peace of mind, or her granddaughter’s. “Promise me she’ll come back safe.”

“She’ll be safe as can be on my ship, ma’am,” he assured her, and he knew she would be. Terrified out of her mind, maybe, and grossed out, most likely, but she’d be under his protection, and if anyone laid so much as a finger on her or her siblings… well. “If everythin’ goes to plan, she’ll be back within a standard year, anyway.” He’d plotted the course from Terra to Ego after his little announcement to the crew, too, and _that_ trip tapped out at something like five months to and five months from – not counting whatever bullshit was gonna happen in the interim, because it _always did_.

He didn’t elaborate on just what that plan he’d brought up was, and Lila and Puro didn’t ask for elaboration. They just gave their granddaughter two, long, parting hugs that Yondu carefully avoided looking at, and were then bustling her into the ship with him, muttering reassurances and soft affection that didn’t do much to cheer her up. It wasn’t much longer before he was shutting the boarding door, and that was when the hiccups started.

He was able to stop himself from sighing at the predicament he found himself in (I mean really, crying kids were just… _so not his area_. Pete’d cried for damn near a month after he’d picked him up _before_ , no matter what he tried, and he could only pray the ones he was gonna pick up this go-around hadn’t just seen their mommas die, too), but let himself roll his eyes. She couldn’t see him doing it, it was fine.

He got down on one knee and tapped her shoulder, taking his arm back when she flinched. She was probably too distraught to try and pay attention to much, but she sniffled and wiped at her face and turned to him when he touched her, so he counted it as a win. He was careful to keep his voice non-threatening when he said, “C’mon, girl, c’mere,” and grabbed her around the waist. (And his hands could almost fully encompass the width of it, good _gods_ , she was tiny.) He hauled her up into his arms, tucking his coat around her when she froze. She was shaking like a leaf, and he readjusted his grip as he moved to the pilot’s seat. Hopefully the physical contact would calm her down a little. Kids liked physical contact, right? Hugs and shit? “It’s gonna get loud, once I turn the engine on, so you keep your head down, y’hear?”

The shaking lessened slightly when he collapsed into his chair, but he felt her nod against his neck, and her little hands come up to cover her ears from where they were still flat against her head and his chest, so he got started on starting the M-ship up, the engine purring to life under them and making her jump in his arms. He only had to shush her once before she was burrowing into his jacket and leathers, and then he was easing the M-ship up one foot, then two, then six, and he was able to see her grandparents watching him take off from the entrance back to their town.

They were nothing more than specks against a dry, cracked yellow field a minute later, and he laid a heavy hand against the trembling body curled in his lap. “Ship’s gonna be pretty loud too, Tiny, so I’ll hafta get’cha some earmuffs once we get there. Somethin’ you can still see through, a’right?”

He wasn’t expecting an answer, and so was moderately surprised when she shifted enough to say, low and thick with tears, “Thanks, Mister Yondu.”

He huffed. “Don’t be thankin’ me, girl, I’m mean as hell. I’m the meanest thing you’ll ever meet.”

Wara let out a series of watery giggles, and he allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk. _Still got it._

–

 _Royada Solan, Iridigedeche. Species Sargardian, homeworld Gardi-12, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Gardi-12, Milky Way Galaxy. Ten full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to difficulties during childbirth. Current guardians consist of the community._ A girl with skin as black as pitch, with white hair hanging in tight coils down her back, with gold eyes, gold lips, and gold freckles. A girl who stood straight, and poised, and looked as unimpressed as anything, while Yondu had worn his thermals today because Gardi-12 was a gods-damned ball of ice at the tail end of its star system and it was taking everything in him for his teeth not to chatter, even in the “warmer” mound of ice at the center of the girl’s home city.

(All the Sargardians had on layers and layers of furs.)

(Yondu did not.)

(Yondu would like these layers and layers of furs.)

“Let me just ask you again,” the leader of this city, Choya, said, in that clipped accent Sargardians had over the universal translator. Yondu had a moment to wonder how Ego handled matriarchal societies, on his fuck-‘em-and-leave-‘em parade, before shaking that thought away to gleefully pick at later. “You are here for Iri, yes?”

“Yup,” he said, popping the ‘p’ and masking the rubbing of his arms as him crossing them instead. “I’m not plannin’ on takin’ her by force none, but she’d be safer on my ship than she’d be here. Her daddy’s kinda, ah… _persistent_.”

“Her ‘daddy’,” Choya repeated, without inflection, and he watched the girl shift on her feet from beside her leader’s throne, her shadow moving against the walls of ice at every angle the torches could get it. “You mean her sperm donor?”

Yondu choked on a cackle, and his grin was wide when he replied, “Tha’s him, a’right.” That’s basically all Miz Quill referred to him as while they were going over the plan, with almost the exact same inflection and look of disdain he could see on the matriarch’s face right now.

Choya harrumphed, and leant back in her throne, rubbing at her chin. She looked remarkably similar to the girl, if some fifty years older, although her eyes and lips were a startlingly bright blue, and she didn’t have any freckles. Their apathetic expressions, however, were identical. “A good man would not have appeared as if from thin air, or disappeared just as quickly. We tried to be rid of him before he could do any damage, but… Leilani was already infatuated. And then he vanished, and left Leilani to… well.”

Yondu felt a sudden rush of cold hit him from behind, probably someone either coming or going, and ground his teeth at the shudder that wanted to escape as it seeped through each and every one of his layers. “He’s done the same to women all over the galaxy, ma’am. There’s thousands that’ve been left to rot thanks t’him, an’ your girl’s one of ‘em.”

Choya’s face twitched, and she sucked in a deep breath, and let it out very slowly. He cast a glance at the girl, and found her looking off to the side. “And you claim that he will come here? For her?”

“I do,” Yondu said. “An’ I _know_ he will. He’s gotta one-track mind, as full of ‘imself as anybody I’ve ever met, an’ when he wants somethin’ he’ll do everything in his power t’get it. An’ ‘e’s gotta not insignificant amount a’ power. When he finds out I’m not bringin’ ‘im what we agreed on, he’ll come for ‘em himself.”

“But he won’t come for _you_?”

Yondu shrugged, and, beyond shame at this point, stuffed his hands under his arms, as though that would warm them up. It didn’t. “Far as he’s concerned, I’m just the piece a’ shit what conned him outta six million credits. He sent me a list, sure, but if I don’t follow through on the deal, he sure as hell ain’t expectin’ me t’go pickin’ none of ‘em up myself. He’s ‘spectin’ me to look out for myself first.” He let himself smirk. “Ravagers’re selfish no-good pirates, after all. No way someone like _me_ ’s thinkin’ a’ those kids’ _safety_.”

Choya grunted, and then looked over at the girl. “Iri.” She turned back, blinking at her. “What do you think?”

Yondu raised an eyebrow. People in charge of little sentient beings didn’t usually take their wishes into account. Including him, when it came to Pete, but Pete was a daredevil with a death wish, he was doing him a favor dictating what he could and could not do, far as he was concerned.

The girl shifted on her feet again, ducking her head. “I… do believe Captain Udonta. It is plausible, with the evidence we have. I do not want to put our city in danger should I stay. But I do not want to go.” This last part was said under her breath, like she was ashamed of saying it, and Choya clicked her tongue, getting to her feet.

“It is okay to be afraid, Iridigedeche,” she told her, grasping her shoulder. “I would be worried if you were not.” The two shared a moment, during which Yondu tapped his foot impatiently and started counting the sconces he could see, until Choya straightened back up.

“Captain Udonta!”

“Ma’am?”

“Iri shall be going with you. But first!” She clapped her hands and rubbed them together, grinning wickedly. “A feast! To celebrate your departure.”

Yondu shut his eyes, and cursed a certain Terran in every language he knew. _Weren’t Centaurians from a tropical climate?! I’m not built for this shit!_ “Ah, well, I’ve got rations on the ship, an’–”

The girl moved forward with Choya, and pat his arm, in an overly formal and placating sort of way. “Do not fret, captain. I will retrieve suitable outerwear for you for the festivities.”

He blinked at Iridigedeche, at the way her eyes shone with amusement in the light from the torches, and glared sullenly at Choya, who barked out a laugh and clapped him on the back hard enough to nearly send him face-first into the hard-packed snow.

–

 _Paya-el, Bonnip. Species Arzzosi, homeworld Arzzosi, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Arzzosi, Milky Way Galaxy. Fifteen full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to difficulties during childbirth. Current guardians are maternal grandparents._ Damp, smooth skin, olive green and mud yellow and spotted brown. Four blood red eyes, with horizontal pupils and a second eyelid each. Each limb ended in four digits and each digit was connected with a web, for swimming in the muddy waters and swamps of Arzzosi.

The kid, as it turned out, was _aching_ to jump ship.

“I can’t stand it here,” he hissed, throwing everything he could into a rucksack made of crocogator skin as Yondu stood in the doorway of the room he shared with three other siblings. “Youngest of nineteen, and who’s the one they all blame ma’s death on?”

He blew out a breath. _Yikes._ “That’s rough, kid.”

He laughed, high and short. “No kidding. You came at the perfect time, honestly.”

And he really had. Turns out, his entire family was at a cousin’s place for the week, some kinda birthday or baby shower or whatever, and he’d begged off, claiming illness, just so he could have a few days to himself. The fact that no one’d offered to stay behind to make sure he didn’t croak in his sleep (no pun intended), even if he _had_ been faking it, even if he _had_ been wanting to be alone, had turned the bitterness from a shift in tide to a climbing wave. He’d been planning on running away at some point before his family came back, but Yondu’d just given him the best escape route he could get, by pure coincidence.

“Why’re you here again?” the kid asked, raising his head to squint his eyes at him. “Something about my pops, right?”

“Unfortunately,” Yondu drawled, watching him yank open a drawer and start digging for skivvies. “Paid me 300,000 up front to grab you, another 400,000 for deliverin’. Not that I’m goin’ to, mind.”

“You said somethin’ about that, too,” the kid said, forcing their arm all the way up to their bicep into the drawer in their quest for finding something specific. “So why– a- _ha_!” He pulled out a wooden box as wide as his hand, stuffed it into his bag, then got back to packing.

“I’m supposed to be enticin’ you with a safe place to stay outta his jurisdiction, so ‘e don’t come lookin’ for you himself,” Yondu said, amused, and scratched his cheek. It was incredibly entertaining, watching the kid go back and forth and back and forth. It didn’t seem like he was planning on bringing each and every one of his belongings along, but what he _was_ bringing was spread far and wide in his corner of the room. “Or with the chance to give him what-for. Don’t look like I gotta try all that hard with the _enticin’_ , though.” With the hours-long feast he’d had to deal with on Gardi-12, getting in and out in something like twenty minutes on Arzzosi tasted like sweet, sweet relief.

“Oh, ha ha,” Bonnip said, pushing one last doodad into his bag before cinching it shut and throwing it over his shoulder. His grin was blinding, and fanged with two rows of teeth. “Are we goin’ or what?”

–

 _Llempem, Llu Llyrinn. Species Irzhestan, homeworld Irzhesta, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Irzhesta, Milky Way Galaxy. Seventeen full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to illness at thirteen full solar cycles old. No current guardians._ An insectoid girl, ten times more so than Bug from _before_ , with digitigrade legs, a cream-colored carapace, and two large, pupil-less, plasma-pink eyes that shone like oil slick in the light of her apartment after she let him in. She stood two heads taller than him and was thinner by far, and her antennae twitched when she spoke, through a mouth that clicked and opened sideways.

“You’re offering me asylum, you say?” she said over her tea, where she was stirring it with a long spoon. Yondu had his own, thoughtfully made by the girl seated in front of him at her tiny kitchen table, not that he was planning on drinking it. (He should probably be referring to her as a woman, she was an adult as far as her species was concerned, but he was more than three times her age, cut him some slack.) “From my father, correct?”

“Tha’s right,” he confirmed with a nod, folding his arms on top of the table. “Or the opportunity to scream yourself hoarse at ‘im, if you’ve got any abandonment issues. Whatever’s more pressin’ for _you_.”

She let out a chittering sound that he took as a laugh. “I can’t deny the thought is tempting, but I’m afraid I’m still not quite sure I understand. My mother was never anything but perfectly complimentary about the man who left her; she never moved on, never had a bad word to say about him, as much as it infuriated my uncle…” This was added as a sort of afterthought, before her voice grew curious again. “Is he a criminal?”

“Hell yes he’s a criminal,” was the first thing he said, because _he’s a gods-damned child murderer, an’ that’s not even takin’ into account how many women he’s killed to make them orphans, of course he’s a fuckin’ criminal._ This was immediately followed by, “But tha’s not why I’m here.”

She hummed. It sounded like buzzing. “Is he _dangerous_?”

Yondu’s lip curled. “More dangerous’n me, girl, an’ tha’s sayin’ somethin’.”

She hummed again, and put the spoon down. “And you feel he is dangerous enough for me, someone who has three certifications in the highest level of physical training available in self-defense on my planet, to leave the home I’ve built for myself, and the job security I have at the forensics lab down the street, to join yourself and your crew of equally dangerous ‘space pirates’… for my own safety.”

“…Well, when y’put it like that, it sounds pretty fuckin’ stupid.”

She chittered again, and then downed all of her tea in one gulp. He spoke again as she was putting the cup back down; “Look, I ain’t holdin’ you at gunpoint, girl, I’m just givin’ you the option. Your daddy’s a megalomaniac who could level this entire planet without havin’ t’think about it, just to get t’ _you_. He’s _that_ obsessed. If you think you can take him–” He shrugged. “–fine by me. I did my part, so it ain’t my problem no more.” Even as his stomach lurched at the prospect of leaving even one of Ego’s kids on their own for him to find and do with as he pleased.

But, the girl was practically grown, just like Aryll. Unlike Aryll, though, she didn’t seem to be holding a grudge against her absent sperm donor. She had a life she was happy with, a family member or two to look out for her, and two handheld blades polished and sharpened hanging as a point of pride in her living area that Yondu could see from here.

She’d be no match for Ego, but–

“Very well,” he heard her say, and blinked at her as she reached across the table to grab his own untouched tea cup and down that in one go, too. “Perhaps I will play it off as needing some time to ‘explore the self’ to my superior; he is a spiritual enthusiast.”

He couldn’t stop himself from snorting. “In a forensics lab?”

Llu Llyrinn’s eyes squinted in amusement. “You’d be surprised. Now come along; you’re helping me pack.”

–

 _Ka’marg, Togahn. Species Klingon, homeworld Qo’noS, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Qo’noS, Milky Way Galaxy. Thirteen full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to combat wounds at one full solar cycles old. Current guardians consist of the community._ The kid’s skin was brown, craggy, and scar-pocked, and the forehead ridges he had were doing everything in their power to make him out to be the hardest thirteen year old in _this_ particular village. He was pretty tall, too, for his age, reaching Yondu’s shoulder standing upright – not that he felt intimidated, seeing as his arrow could skewer each and every one of the community members brandishing weapons at him in five seconds flat. It was something he’d had to demonstrate the moment he’d parked his M-ship, since he’d been surrounded as soon as he’d touched down. He hadn’t wanted to show his hand that soon, but, risking the possibility of getting sliced in half once he opened the boarding door called for desperate measures.

Good news was, they understood where he was coming from _perfectly_ after he'd nearly taken half their eyes out, and lead him to the town center to say his piece with only some light grumbling. Some people just respected you more when you had proof you could kick their ass.

(Didn’t mean he holstered his arrow, though. He wasn’t _that_ stupid.)

“You say this is about Togahn’s father?” the community leader, a burly woman named Urtann, said, pointing her weird metal bow-like contraption that probably wasn’t a bow at all at him. “The one who has not come back to claim him, in all this time?”

“Tha’s the one,” he grunted back, raising the hand that wasn’t busy fiddling with his arrow to set a pointer finger on the very tip of the blade of her weapon and move it away from his face. It made her eyebrows dip dangerously, but he just kept talking. “Contacted me about bringin’ ‘im as many of his sprogs as I can fit on my ship–”

“Sprogs?” another weapon-brandisher shouted out from the crowd, and Yondu sent them a look. “As in more than one?”

“Yes, _sprogs_ , as in _more than one_ ,” he repeated, slowly, so he wouldn’t have to repeat himself a second time. “The man found every inhabited planet he could an’ made ‘imself a kid on each an’ every one, includin’ _yours_.” He jerked his thumb at the kid in question, who was not so much hidden behind the adults as he was staring at him with a very mean scowl. Yondu, as a purveyor of mean scowls, was reluctantly impressed. “He contacted me to bring ‘em to ‘im, somethin’ about makin’ amends–”

“Ha!” Urtann actually lowered her weapon, she found this idea so funny, and wiped at her eyes when they welled up with tears of mirth. The other adults did much the same, chortling to themselves, while the kid bared his teeth. “Making amends! You must be _joking_.”

“Tha’s the story he gave _me_ ,” Yondu told her, scratching at his chin. “Didn’t say nuthin’ ‘bout _believin’_ it.”

She hummed, looking him over with a critical eye. He felt very uncomfortably like she was sizing him up for slaughter. “You are a good judge of character, Yondu Udonta.” _Ah, you wouldn’t be sayin’ that if I were a few decades less wise…_ “Why are you here?”

“T’offer the kid asylum on my ship.”

“Asylum?”

“Once his daddy realizes I ain’t followin’ through on my side a’ the deal, he’ll go pickin’ them kids up himself, or pay someone else to, the way he tried to with me. An’ _he_ don’t take no for an answer.”

She let out a short snarl as the crowd roared, offended, at his words. He barely blinked. “You claim a man as spineless as this _coward_ is capable of taking Togahn from _us_ by force?”

“He’d level the whole damn planet if it meant grabbin’ hold a’ him, woman. An’ it ain’t that he _cares_ that much, ‘cause he couldn’t give more of a damn if he tried – it’s that every other sapient being means jack-shit t’him. You’d just be in his way.”

That made all of them shuffle and murmur excitedly at each other, although the kid remained as pissy as ever, and Urtann glowered at him, as if trying to sniff out if he was lying.

“ _Or_ ,” he offered, blinking wide eyes. “If it’ll make you feel better, he can come for the chance to punch daddy dearest in the face instead. I’ve got at least three more of his blood on my ship just achin’ for the opportunity.”

A few more seconds of silence, during which everyone’s eyes were on them and their stand-off, and then she gave him a wide, narrow-eyed smile, and threw her head back with loud, booming laughter. This seemed to be the cue the crowd needed, as they immediately lowered their weapons.

Yondu’s knees nearly buckled when she clapped him on the shoulder, it was done with so much force. “I like you, Yondu Udonta. Togahn!” The kid jumped, as though he hadn’t been expecting to be addressed, but moved forward expectantly. “You will go with him?”

He stood a little straighter, if that was possible, and thrust his chest out before bowing his head. “Of course!”

“Very good.” She turned back to Yondu, and her grip on his shoulder became this side of painful. It took every inch of willpower he had to not instinctively purse his lips to whistle. “While Togahn prepares for his departure, I would like for you to accompany me to my quarters. We have much to discuss.”

From the look on her face, he figured this ‘discussion’ she was planning really wasn’t a discussion.

From the look on _Togahn’s_ face, from where he was silently pretending to gag just out of Urtann’s periphery, he _knew_ this ‘discussion’ she was planning really wasn’t a discussion.

_Oh-kay…_

–

 _Otoneye, Nala. Species Nagan, homeworld Septerion II, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Septerion II, Milky Way Galaxy. Nine full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to difficulties during childbirth. Current guardian is maternal grandmother._ The girl, like all Nagans, was nothing but a snake with arms. This particular snake with arms had a tail that was six feet long, and her head reached his elbow, full of needle-sharp teeth and two slitted yellow eyes. The scales on her back, head, and arms were a deep, rich emerald, while the ones on her underbelly were a soft baby blue, and – unlike her grandparents and three older siblings – she didn’t have a hood.

She was also the first of Ego’s kids to have overprotective blood relations.

“Absolutely _not_!” her grandmother, Sala, insisted, hugging the girl tightly enough to her chest that she was wheezing. Her siblings, Nele, Nulu, and Nili, were watching the whole affair with interest, and the oldest was doing her best to pry her younger sister from her grandmother’s grip. “She is staying _right here_ , and she’s certainly not going anywhere with _you_!”

Yondu didn’t bother trying not to roll his eyes. She’d been fine letting him into her house when it was to tell them they had her youngest grandchild’s daddy on their tails, but telling them it would be safest to take that grandchild off-planet was what got her interested in how he looked? Trust him, he knew what he looked like, he’d slapped himself in the mirror that morning, had to pull out a rotten tooth himself and drop it into the sink, _he knew_. “Look, lady, I ain’t gonna steal ‘er out from under you–”

“Oh, as though I’d believe that _nonsense_!” she hissed. “You’re nothing but a thug, I’ve seen your kind before, and my Nala is having no part in it–”

 _Oh, for the love of–_ “Dammit, woman, did you even listen to a _word I said_ –”

“I don’t _have_ to–!”

“ _Nana_!” one of the girl’s siblings shouted, and he held his tongue and wiped a hand over his lips to keep them from smirking when he saw the old woman jump at the tone. With her distracted, the oldest was able to free the youngest from her strangling embrace, and the girl immediately started gasping for breath.

“Nala should decide for herself if she wants to go,” the oldest, Nele, told her, and she reeled back in shock.

“Who on– how _dare you_ , Nele, I am your _grandmother_ –!”

“And you’ve been doing nothing but smothering Nala since mom died!” the second youngest, Nili, shrieked, which shut her right up. “You’ve been smothering all of us, but Nala can barely holo-call her friends without you eavesdropping from the door!”

Sala gaped. “I – well, I–”

“I agree,” the second oldest, Nulu, chipped in, raising a hand. “It’s gotten seriously out of control, nana.”

The nana in question sputtered, as though she’d never heard anything so hurtful in her life. “I’ve never heard anything so hurtful in my life!” she said, high-pitched and desperate, yellow eyes flashing, before rounding on Nele, where she was rubbing her sister’s back. “Both of you – go to your rooms!”

“I’m _of age_ , nana, I should get a say–”

“And _you_ –” She didn’t even seem to hear Nele, just shot a positively venomous look at Yondu, who was doing everything he could not to bust out laughing. _Serves you right._ “– _get out of my house_!”

“ _Gladly_ ,” he crowed, grinning right in her furious face, and was just getting ready to turn on his heel to escape the impending shitstorm that was about to go down between her and her grandchildren when–

“I wanna go with him.”

All eyes alighted on the youngest girl, who was staring at the rug beneath them. Before her grandmother could pick her jaw up from where it was hanging in shock, she continued, “If he’s right, and my dad is planning on coming after me, then I don’t want him to hurt any of you, because of me. I’ll go.”

“Now you wait right there, young lady–!”

“ _Nana_!” all three of her other grandchildren yelled, making her sputter again, before Nele was urging her sister to go pack her things. As soon as she left the room, Sala sucked in a breath and turned, escaping into the kitchen, where she started banging pots and pans around. Loudly.

Yondu heard Nili spit a string of curse words under her breath, glaring after the old woman, and Nele sighed, looking him in the eye. “I’m sorry you had to see that…”

He cocked an eyebrow. “From what I heard, it’s been a long time comin’, girl. Don’t waste your breath.”

She moved her head back and forth, as though she was considering his words and found them appropriate, while Nulu snorted and crossed his arms. “That sounds about right.”

The silence was only broken by the growing sounds of unrest from the kitchen, until the youngest sister returned with a suitcase. She looked sheepish. “I had to borrow yours, Nele…”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” the oldest told her, bringing her in for a hug. “So long as I get it back in one piece I’ll be fine.”

“How long’ll she be staying with you?” Nili asked as Nulu got his own hug, doing his best to lift his sister clean off the ground and not succeeding in the slightest thanks to her tail. It did succeed in making her giggle, though, which was apparently the point, going by his grin when he put her back down.

“A standard year, give or take,” he said, as Nili claimed her own hug. “Any longer an’ I’d lose my fuckin’ mind with all those kids runnin’ wild on my ship.”

It was after he said this, and after Nili let go of her sister, that the sobbing started from the kitchen, as loud as the pot and pan rattling and twice as likely to make his eye twitch. All three of the older siblings sighed in unison, while the youngest just looked uncomfortable.

“Go on, Nala, before she tries dragging you back,” Nele said, low enough not to be heard over the caterwauling their grandmother was treating them to, and they all waved when Yondu held the door open for her and shut it behind them.

Sala’s wailing could still be heard from outside of the house. He saw the girl wince.

“Can we, um…” Nala said, awkward, and Yondu compared her wriggling her tail as equivalent to a humanoid shifting their weight on their feet. “Can we hurry? ‘Cause she really might try and drag me back.”

Yondu huffed, and brushed off the lapels of his coat. “Already ahead a’ you, kid.” And then they started speed-walking – and speed-slithering – to where he’d parked the M-ship.

–

 _Ra, Lushan. Species Zerrellian, homeworld Zerrell, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Zerrell, Milky Way Galaxy. Twelve full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to illness at seven full solar cycles old. Current guardian is maternal uncle._ Dark red skin, creamy white markings over the eyes and lips, thick white and black ridged horns curling up from her brow and down the sides of her head behind her pointy ears to rest just above the curve of the shoulders, where a pair of finicky insectoid wings sat twitching just out of view.

This, all from the profile the kid had in Ego’s list, because he hadn’t even gotten a look at them yet. All he’d had to do was tell the guy who opened the door, the kid’s uncle, no doubt, that his ward’s daddy was looking for them, hadn’t even gotten ‘round to telling him that this was a _bad_ thing, before he was being eagerly ushered inside and his host was calling the kid down.

The kid did not come down.

The kid shouted back, in a cracking, angry voice, that their name was, “ _Oshehna_!” and the uncle just clicked his tongue.

“You see, this is why I let you in,” he said, in a disappointed and pompous voice that had a muscle in Yondu’s jaw start going. “Hopefully his father can knock some sense into him; he’s been insisting on being called that ridiculous name for something like a year now, telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s a _girl_ , of all things. It’s terribly embarrassing for the family, you understand…” And then he kept spewing bullshit, even though Yondu purposefully tuned him out, staring up the staircase leading to where the kid’d yelled from.

His patience, as usual, wore thin very quickly. “Oh, I understand where you’re comin’ from _completely_ ,” he schmoozed, offering the uncle a sharp smile. He placed a hand on his chest, playing at sincerity. “I assure you, the kid’s daddy’ll have ‘em sorted out no problem.”

“Oh, that is _such_ a relief,” the uncle gushed, because he was an idiot. “And may I ask – I don’t mean to impose – can you help him pack? It’s just I was already running late for an appointment–”

“Sure,” he drawled, and let the uncle lead him up the stairs to the – locked – door the _girl’s_ voice’d come from. It made the uncle sigh, but he knocked on the door and told her the situation (“There’s a nice man here to take you to your father, Lushan–” “It’s _Oshehna_!” “–and I want you on your best behavior!”) before giving Yondu an apologetic look and escaping back downstairs.

He had to wait until he heard the front door open and close and he was in the free and clear to rap his knuckles on her door himself. “A’right, girl, he’s gone, open up.”

It was silent for a few more seconds, during which he raised his hand to inspect his nails and wonder if he’d been biting at them _too_ much, before he heard the lock click and saw the door crack, just enough for a single, narrowed eye to peer up at him. “You called me ‘girl’.”

“And?” he said back, unimpressed, and watched her crack the door a little more. He could see all of her face, now, and it was scrunched in confused suspicion.

“My uncle doesn’t call me ‘girl’.”

“Do I _look_ like your uncle, _girl_?”

Her knitted brow deepened over her eyes. “You’re supposed to be taking me to my father.” Her voice was thick with the resigned kind of anger Yondu was intimately familiar with.

He bent down to look her in the eye, and smirked with all of his teeth. “Your daddy’s the biggest piece a’ shit I’ve ever met, so believe you me: that is the _last_ thing I’m plannin’ on doin’, even before I got here an’ had to talk to your dumbass uncle. Now start packin’, or I’m leavin’ without’cha.”

Oshehna’s eyes glinted, and the grin she gave him right back was as wicked as he was hoping for.

–

 _A-lal-heh. Species Xalah-halite, homeworld Xalah-hal IX, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Xalah-hal IX, Milky Way Galaxy. Sixteen full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to illness at eight full solar cycles old. Current guardian is maternal aunt._ The girl was a blob of viscous, transparent slime, one who somehow didn’t leave trails of it behind her as she moved and could make limbs as she pleased. She had five glowing balls of light submerged in her core, red and yellow and green and blue and white, and they all blinked brighter and duller when she spoke.

Telepathically, of course, even though they weren’t exactly mind-readers, since Xalah-halites didn’t have mouths or vocal chords.

(He had… no idea how universal translators worked on them…)

(You know what, now wasn’t the time–)

 _Of course!_ the girl’s aunt, A-sul-heh, projected into his brain in a very cheery and matronly voice, after he’d laid down the situation. All five of her own lights were flashing. _It certainly does sound like a decent plan to have Lal join you! Don’t you think so, dear?_

This was addressed to the girl in question, who blinked two of her own lights. _Sure, auntie._ She wiggled, and he assumed that was meant to be he turning towards him. _How long’ll this little trip be?_

“A standard year, tops,” he said with a shrug, and he heard her hum, and her aunt squeal happily.

 _Oh, it’ll be just like a vacation!_ This was when she, uh… _poured_ herself out of her chair and started making her way across the room. _A gap year before college! So many memories to celebrate! So many new opportunities! You’d best start packing now, dear – I’ll help, of course…_ And then Yondu had to tune her out with effort, because, despite being a room and a hallway over, her voice was just as loud in his head as it was when she was right in front of him.

 _Yeah… she’s like that,_ the girl sighed, fond but resigned, and another of her lights flickered. From the way A-sul-heh’s rambling didn’t slow for even a moment, he had a feeling she was only talking to him right now. _She means well, but she…_

“…doesn’t understand that this is kinda serious?” he finished, and she sighed again.

 _Since mom died, she’s refused to be anything but upbeat around me,_ the girl explained, while her aunt went on about the places she’d traveled in her gap year in both of their heads. _She thinks if I see her as anything less than happy, it’ll make everything worse. She probably needs some time apart more than I do._

“…but _you_ at least know that this isn’t actually a vacation, right?”

 _Oh, for sure,_ A-lal-heh said, wobbling her upper half a little. A nod, maybe? _And I think she does, too, deep down. But I should be in there dictating what she’s packing for me._ She moved to follow where her aunt disappeared and was still. Talking. _She’ll have half my room packed by now. You wanna help?_

“I–”

_Nah, you’re gonna help._

–

 _T’Sael K’Gou, Sch’tek. Species Vulcan, homeworld Vulcan, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Vulcan, Milky Way Galaxy. Thirteen full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to illness at six full solar cycles old. Current guardian is maternal aunt._ As average as any of Ego’s kids, where the only thing separating him from the many, many Xandarians and much fewer Terrans he’d met in his life were his pointed ears, weird haircut, even weirder slanted eyebrows, and his green blood, instead of blue or red. This green blood stood out very clearly on his pale cheeks, and his brown eyes were doing their ever-best to set him on fire, with little success.

The kid’s aunt, T’Ano, wasn’t exactly what one would call charitable to her guest, either. Yondu didn’t know if this was because Vulcans were so gods-damned uptight, or because of the information he was bringing to her doorstep.

“I cannot claim that the idea of my nephew’s biological father abandoning my sister for the purposes of producing even more children is unexpected,” she told him, holding her tea and _only_ holding her tea. Compared to said nephew, in the chair beside her in her sitting room, she was holding herself incredibly loosely. “Rather, I cannot claim that it is something I cannot picture him doing. I recognized that the man was fraudulent from the moment he began courting T’Osa; the details behind his fraudulence were what evaded me. I could not discover any conclusive evidence, and he disappeared before I could interrogate him properly.”

“So you believe me?”

She raised a carefully plucked eyebrow. “While I accepted that Sch’tek’s father was corrupt in some capacity without evidence, Captain Udonta, I will not so the same in regards to your claims. I will admit that it is a permissible theory, however. You still have access to this list, correct?”

He made a noise of agreement, and dug the view screen out from his pocket to pass over to her. She scrolled through the list of names and coordinates for some time, and he pulled at his scarf and collar as she did. Vulcan was hotter than practically anything he was used to, and _far_ dryer. Arzzosi’d been just as hot, but humid and damp, and he’d only been there for half an hour, which was already less time than he’d spent in T’Ano’s sitting room. He’d never been a fan of deserts in the first place, but this experience was really making him wonder how anyone could deal with that much sun and that much sand every gods-damned day, ‘species that’d evolved to thrive in a desert environment’ or not.

“I have come to the conclusion that you are telling the truth, Captain Udonta,” T’Ano said, knocking him out of his thoughts. The only thing betraying what she was thinking was how tight her grip was on the view screen as she held it out for him to take back. “Concerning this. You also claim he will come here for Sch’tek, if he does not go with you. That I am not so sure of. What evidence do you have to support _this_ theory?”

“Don’t got no evidence for that,” he told her frankly. “But, the man came to _me_ , a Ravager captain, with a Ravager crew, on the premise of pickin’ up his children. Children as young as one or two, on a ship with some a’ the galaxy’s shittiest thugs – pardon my Contraxian – an’ travelin’ more‘n enough jumps for somethin’ t’go wrong in the meanwhile. Children he didn’t feel the need t’tell me to bring ‘im in one piece. Children he was willin’ t’pay whatever number I spat at him t’get. Children he’s got more information on than someone what had nuthin’ t’do with them or their mommas since he left ‘em knocked up an’ on their own has any business having. An’ it wasn’t just two, or five, or ten – it was _thousands_ , on that list. Thousands a’ kids, that he fathered across _jus’ this_ galaxy, an’ then left on their lonesome to father even more – jus’ t’come to _me_ , who has enough warrants to send any decent parent sprinting the other way, to ferry ‘em to ‘im. So no, I don’t got the evidence you’re lookin’ for… but I don’t have nuthin’ claimin’ he’s innocent, neither.”

The following silence was tense enough to make a lesser being run out the room. It was broken when T’Ano blinked, breaking eye contact with him, and set her cup of tea down on the low table before them. Yondu carefully didn’t mention the near imperceptible tremor in her hands as she did so. He also carefully didn’t mention how the kid all of this was over was sat stock-still and wide-eyed beside her.

She turned to said kid. “Nephew,” she said, in a moderately gentler tone than she’d been using for the rest of their little ‘talk’. “Go and pack your belongings. I will be up momentarily to assist you.”

The kid looked stricken, as much as he was trying to hide it. “Aunt–”

“Go.”

His jaw worked for a moment or two, and he spared Yondu what could only be the weakest glare he’d ever seen, before jerking to his feet and stalking off like his robes were on fire. It was only when his footsteps faded that T’Ano turned back to him, and it was with a furrowed brow and eyes he couldn’t help but think were doing their best to burn a hole right through him. “Your word, Captain Udonta,” is what she said, sharp and pointed. “That my nephew will return to me, as I left him, before the patriarch of our family dies.”

That had him raising an eyebrow. “How long’s ‘e got?”

She raised her own. “Hm. I suppose you will have to find out.”

And then she stood and followed after her nephew, and Yondu was left wondering if he’d just been threatened.

The vulcans’ goodbyes were stiff, formal, and impersonal compared to the affectionate, teary-eyed ones he’d had to deal with from some of the other kids’ guardians. If T’Ano hadn’t basically told him ‘fuck around and find out’ in regards to her nephew, he would’ve assumed their relationship was about as detached as two random strangers’. The only physical contact they had before the kid was tucked away in his M-ship involved them pressing all five of their fingertips together, the way he saw Stakar do when he was trying to play the all-knowing evil Ravager overlord. He had no idea what the gesture meant, but the kid looked slightly less homicidal afterwards, so he decided not to question it.

“Captain Udonta,” T’Ano called, before he could shut the boarding door, and he looked over to find her standing, like some kind of stone sentinel, openly frowning at him. It was the most emotion he’d seen on anyone’s face since he’d touched down. “It would be in your best interests to remember my conditions.”

He closed his eyes to keep from rolling them. “I’ll have ‘im back within the year, that good enough for ya? Bye.” And then he shut the boarding door in her face.

He’d grown just a little impatient in his old age, sue him.

The kid’d already managed to curl himself into the co-pilot’s seat by the time he entered the cockpit, poking at his own portable view screen with vigor. He took his own seat and started up the engine, letting it purr. “Y’all’re touch telepaths, right? Through skin contact?”

The kid raised his head to give him a look that he would’ve called confused on anyone else. “Correct…?”

He grunted as he started easing the M-ship up one foot, then two, then six, and he was able to see the kid’s aunt watching him take off from the entrance back to her home. She was nothing more than a speck amongst other specks against the dry, orange surface of Vulcan a minute later. “I’ll get’cha some gloves once we get back to the ship, then. Best not t’risk it, eh?”

He wasn’t expecting an answer, and so was moderately surprised when the kid, after several long moments of silence, spoke up to say, a bit timidly, “…Thank you for the consideration, Captain Udonta.”

He huffed. “You wanna thank me, tell me when your _patriarch_ or whatever the fuck’s plannin’ on snuffin’ it.” He saw the kid’s head jerk up out of the corner of his eye, and continued, blasé, “I get the feelin’ your auntie’s plannin’ on castratin’ me if I don’t get’chu back in time for it.” She hadn’t said as much, but he could just tell. _Were all Vulcan women that terrifying?_

Some more silence, and Yondu spared a proper glance over at him just in time to see Sch’tek wipe the pleased expression from his face in exchange for a carefully blank one. _Still got it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please don't lecture me on klingon or vulcan culture, I'm begging you, I consulted the wiki/s and everything


	8. Phase 3.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _First, though: Pluto._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am. sorry for taking so long. I'm graduating in may so lord knows if I'll have the free time Then to write some more. but. hey
> 
> also apparently this is 3k? huh. terra's next y'all!

Coming to a stop in the Terran system after having only ever been there once, and never near Pluto, was… _interesting_ , to say the least. As he’d predicted, Pluvian orbit was far enough away from where this particular strand of the Nova corps were stationed, in the belt of asteroids that stood between Jupiter and the little uninhabited red planet next to Terra, to keep them from noticing they had anything to worry about. He’d have to go by M-ship to pick up Miz Quill and Pete just to have a chance at getting in and out unscathed and unnoticed. Having already done it once gave him an advantage, but there was always the possibility that last time, there’d been a million and one variables acting together to create the conditions he’d been working with, and that those conditions weren’t gonna be present this go ‘round. It was something he was… very aware of, to say the least.

But, just like talking to Stakar, it was something he had to do. And this part of the plan was only slightly less suicidal.

First, though: Pluto. Another ball of ice at the back end of its solar system, but, unlike Gardi-12, it wasn’t any bigger than some of the colonized asteroids at the very, very edge of the system they’d passed to get there. Its natives weren’t exactly backwater, but there also weren’t that many of them. From what he could remember Martinex telling him before he’d gotten bored and purposefully tuned him out, it was because Pluvians tended to live longer than a lot of other sentients, and most of them didn’t feel the need to shack up and pop out a couple kids unless there was a severe dip in the population.

Clearly, Ego’d managed to weasel his way into changing some poor girl’s mind on that, in his pursuit of his so-called “dream”.

And left her with _twins_.

Twin _boys_.

They were the only twins he’d seen on the list – although, that could just be because he’d taken the most cursory glance he could, scrolling and scrolling and _scrolling_ trying to find an end to the gods-damned names and skipping over tens upon hundreds more as he did – and from what he could remember, twins on Pluto were pretty rare anyway. He could only imagine the shitstorm it’d dredged up: the mother not only making a kid with an asshole that took off as soon as he came (literally), but making _two_. Talk about bad luck.

_Marty’d get a helluva kick outta this._

Getting to the surface wasn’t an issue, the same way it hadn’t been an issue on any of the other planets Ego’d left his mark on. He’d had to dock in their only space port, which was damn tiny, due to Pluto not exactly getting a lotta _visitors_. Usually he’d risk it and park wherever, since dealing with even just regular port authorities grated like an itch he couldn’t scratch, but he wasn’t there to introduce anyone to their maker if he could help it. He’d had to give ‘em the almighty “emergency refuel” excuse as soon as he touched down, so he wouldn’t get his ass kicked, but that wasn’t even that much of a lie, since he was only on half a tank, and equally simple was getting permission to poke around for a bit while they treated his M-ship to a drink. Like Miz Quill said: peasy-easy squemon-leezy.

The orphanage the twins were at was the only one on the planet, and only had three kids in residence, counting them. It also wasn’t exactly _close_ to the port, but he could definitely hike his ass there and back before anyone got too up in arms about it. He’d thought up an excuse for why an off-worlder was leaving with two children along the way, contemplating whether he should embellish it for shits and giggles, but by then he was already at the front door and pulling the line connected to the doorbell, puffing his breath into his hands to try and warm them up. He’d worn three times as many layers as he had on Gardi-12 to prepare for the cold this time, along with the very nice fur coat and thick gloves Iri’d given him after she’d joked about how his shivering hadn’t been as unnoticeable as he’d been trying to make it (she was arguably the most polite of Ego’s kids, true, but she could still be a little shit when she wanted to be), but it was still _freezing_.

A Pluvian ( _who would’ve guessed_ ) answered the door after a few seconds, pulling the hard packed ice away to see who it was. From their expression, he had a feeling a blue mammalian was not what they were expecting. “Ah… hello?”

He coughed into his hand to stifle a snicker. “Sorry t’be botherin’ ya…?”

Good news was, they took the hint. “Ah – Kileel. Kileel Z’Woro.” They stuck their hand out, in the gap of the open door, and Yondu took it. They squinted their eyes before letting go. “And you are?”

Still suspicious, that’s good. “Yondu Udonta, Captain of the 99th Ravager Clan.” That had them twitching back in shock; as isolated as Pluvians were, in their edge-of-the-galaxy star system, it seemed they’d still heard of the hordes. “I see our reputation precedes us. I’ll admit, I ain’t here for nuthin’ good, but I ain’t plannin’ on robbin’ you blind, neither. Not here for that kinda business. May I…?” He motioned to the door.

After several moments’ hesitation, during which neither of them turned their eyes from the other, Kileel, slowly, nodded, and moved aside to let him enter the slightly-warmer interior of the orphanage. He could hear the muffled voices of the kids through the open doorways and thick walls as the door was shut behind them. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that I will do everything in my power to kill you should harm come to myself or the others in this building,” they told him, almost pleasantly, and Yondu grinned, sticking his gloved hands in his pockets.

“Nah, figured ‘s much,” he admitted, turning to face them directly. “But I’m afraid that’s part a’ the problem. The children, I mean. Two of ‘em, that is.”

As he spoke, Kileel’s expression became darker and darker, until they were outright glaring, and they took a step forward, opening their mouth, likely to curse him out. “I was contacted,” he continued blithely, “somethin’ like a month or two ago by now, by a being goin’ by th’name of _Ego_. Sound familiar?” The Pluvian’s brows came together, so he took that as a _no_. “Thought not. He’s an asshole, t’answer your question, I mean a real grade-A jackass. Been ridin’ through the cosmos, landin’ on every occupied planet he could find, shackin’ up with every gullible girl he could talk into hangin’ off his every word.”

He let that linger for a second, till he saw something like realization bloom in Kileel’s eyes. “From what _I’m_ t’understand,” he drawled, cocking his head. “Your planet was one among thousands, an’ the twins he left behind when he dumped their momma were two among even more. Sent me a list chock full of ‘em ‘n everything. I mean, it jus’ sounds suspicious… don’t it?” Except it wasn’t really a question, and Kileel knew it.

When he saw them start to fidget, he went in full tilt. He hadn’t had to (and really, hadn’t _wanted_ to) with the other kids’ families and guardians in his attempts to convince them, because he already knew how they would’ve reacted: _fucking badly_. Kileel, however, had no relation to the twins’ dead mother, and take that little detail and mix it with his reputation… “But when you add that to the fact that _apparently_ – by some _cosmic coincidence_ – all these kids’ mommas’d kicked it before he came t’ _me_ , a Ravager – someone even you, on the outs a’ the worst a’ Xandar’s influence, recognized by name – to ferry these orphaned kids t’him without even an aside to have ‘em in one piece by the time they get there, claimin’ he wants t’be a part a’ their lives now, after their mommas’re gone, while havin’ all this info on each an’ every one of ‘em, from their date a’ birth to where they’re living down to the bedroom, an’ even how best to lure ‘em along without a fight… well. It starts to paint a picture. An’ it sure as hell ain’t a pretty one. You follow?”

“…I follow.”

He offered Kileel a grim smile. Pluvians were made of crystal, and right then, this one could’ve passed for a statue, they were so still. That stillness was punctuated by a silence that permeated the ice around them; the kids, he knew, several rooms over, had been eavesdropping for some time. “Good. Now, I ain’t exactly plannin’ on takin’ those twins by force none. Couldn’t even if I tried; tryna sneak two li’l hellions outta here, down to the port, an’ then onboard without either you or the port authorities noticin’ would take more effort than I’m willin’ t’give right now, let alone when you add actually reaching atmo into the equation, an’ especially since I jus’ told you what’s goin’ down. I’m here t’give you the option a’ either keepin’ ‘em here, where their daddy could grab ‘em whenever he pleases an’ would, with no exaggeration, destroy the rest a’ the planet if that was what it took to get his hands on ‘em… or, to let ‘em come with me, where I can keep ‘em moving an’ off his radar.”

Some more moments of silence, where they just looked at each other, waiting for one of them to break it. Kileel broke first. “That doesn’t feel like much of a choice.”

He rolled his shoulders. That was fair. “Those are the options. All I can tell you is that it’ll be safer in the long-run if they come with me. Ravagers don’t deal in kids, an’ I’ve got the big boss checkin’ in every so often makin’ sure I’m not tempted.” That part wasn’t strictly true; Stakar, against all odds, trusted him enough to at least know he wasn’t gonna be making the same mistake _again_ , so he wasn’t calling him every other day asking for an update, he just kind of left him to it... but Kileel didn’t need to know that.

The Pluvian blinked at him. “Why would you be tempted?”

“Ego’s offerin’ more’n enough credits to get even the most staunch anti-traffickers t’reconsider,” he explained, loftily, like he wasn’t clenching his fists in his pockets. It was almost exactly what he’d said to Aryll, back on Contraxia, and what he told himself, these days, over and over, tryna convince himself he couldn’t’ve been the only dumbass to fall for it. You’d think he’d’ve gotten even a little numb to that feeling, that mixture of guilt and fury. He hadn’t. “He’ll always be able to find someone else to take the job – people a lot less charitable’n me, an’ I’ll be the first to tell you I ain’t exactly what you’d call _charitable_ , an’ tha’s if he don’t show up ‘imself. But I already conned ‘im outta six million for kids he ain’t gonna get, an’ I got eleven of ‘em on my ship right now, doin’ their best to break every fuckin’ thing they can get their grubby li’l hands on, an’ with my reputation he’ll think it’s jus’ the credits I took. People like me don’t give a shit about _kids_ , after all.”

Kileel looked him up and down. “Yeah,” they said dryly. “I can see that.”

He didn’t bother pretending not to roll his eyes, but perked up when they called the twins all this bullshit was over out. There was a flurry of noise, one yelp, and then one of them walked out of the open doorway with his chin held as high as it could get. The other peered around the ice to give both Yondu and Kileel a cautious look before he followed his brother at a much more sedate pace, with his head bowed instead of raised.

 _Y’Bala, Sewell; Y’Bala, Tewell. Species Pluvian, homeworld Pluto, Milky Way Galaxy. Currently located on Pluto, Milky Way Galaxy. Six full solar cycles old. Mother succumbed to illness at two solar cycles old. Current guardian is community orphanage owner._ Like Martinex, and Kileel, and every other Pluvian he’d ever met, they were “made” of clear silicon crystal with sunken black eyes and no hair. These two were much shorter than every other Pluvian he’d ever met, though, only reaching his mid-thigh, whereas Kileel stood just a few inches shorter than him (and Martinex exactly one inch taller, something he’d been sure to call out as often as physically possible, with glee and a not insignificant amount of smugness, when they were on the same ship. Because Martinex was an _asshole_ ).

“You called, Mx. Kileel?” one of them, the polite one, said, standing closer to their guardian, while his brother stood smack dab between them, staring at Yondu hard. It was a decent scowl, for a six-year-old, but certainly nowhere near as intimidating as he probably thought it was.

Kileel didn’t even have to sigh for Yondu to hear it in their voice. “How much did you hear?”

That had the polite one grimacing in a way that made the light bouncing off his face twist. “…Practically all of it, Mx. Kileel.”

“I see.” They really did sigh, then, and raised a hand to rub at their forehead. “And what do you think?”

From the way the kid stiffened, he probably wasn’t used to giving his opinion. Yondu had a feeling his brother was the more outgoing member of their little duo, as evidenced by the immovable look of suspicion still directed his way. Yondu was purposefully avoiding eye contact, at this point, so he couldn’t give him the satisfaction. He wondered how long it’d take for the kid to kick him to get his attention instead.

“Well…” the polite one began, unsure. “I… I don’t think we–”

“We’re _going_!” the scowly one stated, in a squeaky voice identical to his brother’s that did nothing to make him any kind of threatening. He did take his eyes off of him to scowl at his brother, though, and then up at his guardian, who looked anything but impressed when he stomped his foot. “We’re going! We aren’t staying here! We’re _going_!”

Yondu had a moment to wonder if this kid was as spoiled as his words and tone implied, or if he just hated his planet or the orphanage that much, before Kileel said flatly, “I was asking Sewell, Tewell. Wait your turn.”

It seemed they’d put just enough steel in their voice to make the kid shut up and grumble instead of keep yelling. The polite one spoke up again, giving his brother an angry look, before he responded; “I don’t think we have a choice, Mx. Kileel.”

“Sure y’do,” Yondu broke in, raising an eyebrow when that made him jump. He looked a little scared, but he’d kind of expected that; meeting an off-worlder for the first time hit everyone differently. “You can come with, or you can stay. Simple s’that. You both heard all the juicy details an’ the pros an’ cons, and I ain’t fuckin’ kidnappin’ you, so which’ll it be?”

He saw Kileel open their mouth outta the corner of his eye, probably to tell him off for talking to a kid like that (which, look, who gives a shit, they were sentient beings who were gonna be old enough to be talked to frankly eventually, why not get an early start, huh?), but the scowly one interrupted again. “We’re _going_! And _I’m_ getting _my stuff_!” And with that, he stormed off, and disappeared around another doorway, where some clanking and clacking began to escape.

Yondu coughed into his fist to keep from saying something about that, which earned him a haughty glare from the Pluvian in charge. The other twin started talking before either of them could say anything, though, and was painfully earnest when he did. “I don’t want you or Helew getting hurt ‘cause of me…”

“You know Helew and I would do everything in our power to protect you,” Kileel told him, in a softer tone than Yondu’d heard throughout the entire visit, but the kid just scuffed his foot against the floor. “Both of you.”

“I know,” he said, small. He scuffed his foot again. The noises his brother were making a room over were louder than what he said next, but Yondu heard it nevertheless: “But I still think we should go. I don’t want to, but I think we should go.”

And, well. That was that.

Kileel made several more attempts to convince the kid that his opinion mattered, that he didn’t have to go if he didn’t want to, but the kid was deadset: he was doing this for the _greater good_ , the safety of his guardian and orphanage-mate. Yondu was able to glean that his brother’s opinion apparently meant absolutely jack shit to him as the two adults followed him into the twins’ shared room to watch them bicker and pack, since, according to Kileel, the scowly one’d been looking for any excuse to get outta dodge since a “Mr. L’Baya” tried to adopt one without the other and wound up going home with neither a few months back, due almost solely because said scowly one’d thrown a massive tantrum about being left behind.

“Sewell had been furious, and they had just barely started talking to one another again last week,” Kileel explained later still, as they drew up the paperwork necessary for him to get through the port authorities without them kicking up a fuss about bringing back two random kids and taking off with them, making the excuse he’d thought up earlier effectively useless.

Six years old, and there was already bad blood starting to fester.

Yondu could relate.

Unfortunately, these were the two little hellions he was taking back to the _Eclector_ , that he had to walk back to and get aboard his M-ship without shaking sense into or letting kill each other in the process. The documents Kileel gave him let them back into his ship with only a few narrowed eyes, but Tewell was doing everything in his power to touch everything he shouldn’t as Yondu started the engine, and Sewell was doing everything in his power to yell at the top of his little lungs about behaving as they entered atmo and then yelling some more when Tewell would just glare at him and press even more buttons and tug on even more wires as Yondu pulled into the shuttle bay.

Without the prying eyes of the port authorities digging into his back, Yondu was able to grab both of them by their collars and drag them bodily off of the M-ship into the belly of the beast, where Herschk stood waiting with Lal. Three of the girl’s lights twinkled when she saw him, and she came slithering over with Herschk in tow, vibrating a little with amusement when he had to hold both boys out at arms’ length away from each other to keep them from kicking him or themselves. Herschk coughed to keep from laughing, and Yondu spared him a disgusted glare.

“ _Here_ ,” he snarled, dropping the twins into Lal’s outstretched tendrils, where she immediately wrapped them up in her slime to keep them from squirming too much. Their heads and legs were still free, but having been caught in the clutches of a new species they’d never seen before had rendered them speechless, thank whatever gods were out there.

“Herschk.” He gestured back to his M-ship after the Kallosian started at being addressed. “Their shit’s in there.” He muttered out a “’course, cap’n” and hustled to go grab whatever they’d brought along, while he turned back to Lal, who was flickering her lights to entertain her tiny audience. “Show ‘em where they’ll be sleepin’.”

 _Of course Mr. Udonta sir, right away Mr. Udonta sir_ , she projected, deadpan, following it up with and equally deadpan, _Have you ever said please once in your life_ , in a low enough tone that he would’ve assumed he wasn’t meant to hear, if it was coming from anyone who wasn’t a _telepath_. He curled his lip at her, which just made her wobble in a way he’d come to learn meant she was smirking very smugly, and then she was moving away back into the bowels of the ship with her cargo. He saw Sewell and Tewell stare and blink at her with wide eyes as she did so, and figured she was finally talking to them, especially when Tewell loudly asked "how she was doing that". Herschk came hurtling out of the M-ship less than two seconds later with the twins’ bags thrown across his back, and jogged after Lal to make sure he didn’t lose them.

Yondu rolled his shoulders, grunting when one or two vertebrae popped at the motion, and loped off to his own quarters, making sure to take the long way, where he wouldn’t be intercepted by even the men most familiar with the ship. There, he took his coat off, laid down, and tried to smother himself with a pillow for a hot second.

The only saving grace, here, with so many kids running about (and, he was sure, two more who were going to make the vents and pipes and unconquered nooks and crannies their new home away from home), was that Terra, with how the planets were aligned in the system right now, was closer to Pluto than Jupiter was.

Terra was going to be their next stop.

_Meredith Quill, so help me, you’d better be fucking ready._


End file.
